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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




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Samuel Johnson, LL.D. 

From a photograph of the painting by John Opie, R.A., in the 
National Portrait Gallery 





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MACAULAY'S 



Life of Samuel Johnson 



WITH A SELECTION FROM HIS ESSAY 
ON JOHNSON 



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Edited 
With an Introduciion and Nofes 

BY 

CHARLES LANE HANSON 

Instructor in English, Mechanic Arts High School, Boston 

Editor of Carlyle's " Essfy, on, B'=''iNS," " Rei^a^i 

sentative Poems of BI/T^'n^s,'' etc' 




THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS. 

Two Copies Received 

AUG 26 1903 

Copyrignt Entry 

Qv^vcc f Jr. f ^e^ 

^CLASS O- XXc. No 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1903, by 
CHARLES LANE HANSON 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



c t c t o 



» e 



< 1 1 .< 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The editor explains the difference between Macaulay's 
Life of fohnsoft and Macaulay's Essay on fohnson in the 
Introduction, IV, p. xxviii, and gives his reason for printing 
only a portion of the Essay. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction : 

PAGE 

I. An Introduction to Macaulay .... ix 

II. Macaulay and his Literary Contemporaries . xxiii 

III. The Study of Macaulay xxv 

IV, Macaulay on Johnson xxviii 

V. Reference Books xxix 

VI. Chronology of Macaulay's Life and Works xxxii 

Life of Samuel Johnson i 

Selection from Macaulay's Essay on Croker's Edition 

OF Boswell's Life of Johnson .... 45 

Notes 77 



Vll 



INTRODUCTION 

I. AN INTRODUCTION TO MACAULAY 

(1800- I 859) 

Before Thomas Babington Macaulay was big enough to 
hold a large volume he used to lie on the rug by the open fire, 
with his book on the floor and a piece of bread and butter 
in his hand. Apparently the three-year-old boy was as fond 
of reading as of eating, and even at this time he showed that 
he was no mere bookworm by sharing with the maid what he 
had learned from "a volume as big as himself." He never 
tired of telling the stories that he read, and as he easily 
remembered the words of the book he rapidly acquired a 
somewhat astonishing vocabulary for a boy of his years. One 
afternoon when the little fellow, then aged four, was visiting, 
a servant spilled some hot coffee on his legs. The hostess, 
who was very sympathetic, soon afterward asked how he was 
feeling. He looked up in her face and replied, " Thank you, 
madam, the agony is abated." It was at this same period of 
his infancy that he had a little plot of ground of his own, 
marked out by a row of oyster shells, which a maid one day 
threw away as rubbish. " He went straight to the drawing-room, 
where his mother was entertaining some visitors, walked into 
the circle, and said, very solemnly, ' Cursed be Sally ; for it is 
written. Cursed is he that removeth his neighbor's landmark.' " ^ 

As these incidents indicate, the youngster was precocious. 
When he was seven, his mother writes, he wrote a compendium 

- Trevelyan, Life and Letters^ I, 41. 
ix 



X INTRODUCTION 

of universal history, and " really contrived to give a tolerably 
connected view of the leading events from the Creation to 
the present time, filling about a quire of paper." Yet, 
fond as he was of reading, he was " as playful as a kitten." 
Although he made wonderful progress in all branches of his 
education, he had to be driven to school. Again and again 
his entreaty to be allowed to stay at home met his mother's 
"No, Tom, if it rains cats and dogs, you shall go." The boy 
thought he was too busy with his Hterary activities to waste 
time in school ; but the father and mother looked upon his 
productions merely as schoolboy amusements. He was to be 
treated like other boys, and no suspicion was to come to him, 
if they could help it, that he was superior to other children. 
The wise parents had set themselves no easy task in their 
determination to pay little attention to the unusual gifts of 
this lad. One afternoon, when a child, he went with his father 
to make a social call, and found on the table the' Lay of the 
Last Minstrel, which he had never before seen. While the 
others talked he quietly read, and on reaching home recited 
as many stanzas as his mother had the patience or the strength 
to hear. Clearly a boy who had read incessantly from the 
time he was three years old, who committed to memory as 
rapidly as most boys read, and who was eager to declaim 
poetry by the hour, or to tell interminable stories of his own, 
would attract somebody's attention. Fortunately for all con- 
cerned the lady who was particularly interested in him, and 
who had him at her house for weeks at a time, Mrs. Hannah 
More, encouraged without spoiling him, and rewarded him by 
buying books to increase his library. When he was six or 
eight years old, she gave him a small sum with which to lay 
"a corner-stone" for his library, and a year or two afterward 
she wrote that he was entitled to another book : " What say 
you to a little good prose? Johnson's ' Hebrides,' or Walton's 
' Lives,' unless you would Hke a neat edition of ' Cowper's 



INTRODUCTION xi 

Poems,' or 'Paradise Lost,' for your own eating?" Whether 
he began at once to eat Milton's great epic we are not told, 
but at a later period he said that " if by some miracle of 
vandalism all copies of ' Paradise Lost ' and ' The Pilgrim's 
Progress ' were destroyed off the face of the earth, he would 
undertake to reproduce them both from recollection. " ^ 

Prodigy though he was, Thomas was more than a reader 
and reciter of books. Much as he cared for them he cared 
more for his home, — t^at simple, thrifty, comfortable home, — 
and his three brothers and five sisters. His father, Zachary, 
did a large business as an African merchant. This earnest, 
precise, austere man was so anxious for his eldest son to have 
a thoroughly trained mind that he expected a deliberation and 
a maturity of judgment that are not natural to an impetuous 
lad. The good-natured, open-hearted boy reasoned with him 
and pleaded with him, and whether successful or not in per- 
suading his father, loved him just the same. The mother, with 
all her love and ambition for him, took the utmost pains to 
teach him to do thoroughly whatever he undertook, in order 
that he might attain the perfect development of character that 
comes alone from the most vigorous training. His sister, Lady 
Trevelyan, writes : " His unruffled sweetness of temper, his 
unfailing flow of spirits, his amusing talk, all made his presence 
so delightful that his wishes and his tastes were our law. He 
hated strangers and his notion of perfect happiness was to see 
us all working round him while he read aloud a novel, and then 
to walk all together on the Common, or, if it rained, to have a 
frightfully noisy game of hide-and-seek." It was a habit in the 
family to read aloud every evening from such writers as Shaks- 
pere. Clarendon, Miss Edgeworth, Scott, and Crabbe ; and, as 
a standing dish, the Qtm?'terly and the Edinburgh Review. 

From this home, in which he was wisely loved, Thomas was 
sent to a private school near Cambridge. Then his troubles 

1 Trevelyan, I, 47. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

began. The twelve-year-old boy longed for the one attraction 
that would tempt him from his books — home life — and 
months ahead he counted the days which must pass before 
he could again see the home "which absence renders still 
dearer." In August, 1813, he urged his mother for permis- 
sion to go home on his birthday, October 25 : "If your appro- 
bation of my request depends upon my advancing in study, I 
will work like a cart-horse. If you should refuse it, you will 
deprive me of the most pleasing illusion which I ever experi- 
enced in my life." ^ But the father shook his head and the 
boy toiled on with his Greek and Latin. He wrote of learning 
the Greek grammar by heart, he tried his hand at Latin verses, 
and he read what he pleased, with a preference for prose fic- 
tion and poetry. 

When eighteen years old (in October, 1818), Macaulay 
entered Trinity College, Cambridge. But for mathematics 
he would have been made happy. He writes to his mother : 
" Oh for words to express my abomination of that science, if a 
name sacred to the useful and embellishing arts may be applied 
to the perception and recollection of certain properties in num- 
bers and figures ! . . . * Discipline ' of the mind ! Say rather 
starvation, confinement, torture, annihilation ! " ^ There were 
prizes, but Macaulay was not a prize winner. He was an excel- 
lent declaimer and an excellent debater, and undoubtedly might 
have won more honors had he been willing to work hard on 
the subjects prescribed, whether he liked them or not. But he 
was eager to avoid the sciences, and he was not content to be 
a mere struggler for honors. He was sensible enough to enjoy 
the companionships the place afforded. He knew something 
of the value of choosing comrades after his own heart, who were 
thoroughly genuine and sincere, natural and manly. Even if, 

1 The entire letter is interesting. See Trevelyan, I, 56. The letters 
of this period are particularly attractive. 
•-' Ibid. I, 91. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

as Mr. Morison says, the result of his college course was that 
" those faculties which were naturally strong were made stronger, 
and those which were naturally weak received little or no exer- 
cise," he wisely spent much time with a remarkable group of 
young men, among whom Charles Austin was king. Of Austin, 
John Stuart Mill says, " The impression he gave was that of 
boundless strength, together with talents which, combined with 
such apparent force of will and character, seemed capable of 
dominating the world." And Trevelyan adds, " He certainly 
was the only man who ever succeeded in dominating Macaulay." 
Austin it was who turned Zachary Macaulay's eldest son from 
a Tory into a Whig. The boy had always been interested in 
the political discussions held in his father's house, a center of 
consultation for suburban members of Parliament, and had 
learned to look at public affairs with no thought of ambition 
or jealous self-seeking. This sort of training, supplemented 
by his discussions at college, where he soon became a vigorous 
politician, developed a patriotic, disinterested man. 

In the midst of his inexpressible delight in the freedom the 
college course gave him to indulge his fondness for literature 
and to spend his days and nights walking and talking with his 
mates, he continued to remember his family with affection, and 
did not neglect to write home. On March 25, 182 1, he wrote 
his mother : " I am sure that it is well worth while being sick 
to be nursed by a mother. There is nothing which I remember 
with such pleasure as the time when you nursed me at Aspenden. 
The other night, when I lay on my sofa very ill and hypochon- 
driac, I was told that you were come ! How well I remember 
with what an ecstasy of joy I saw that face approaching me, 
in the middle of people that did not care if I died that night, 
except for the trouble of burying me ! The sound of your 
voice, the touch of your hand, are present to me now, and will 
be, I trust in God, to my last hour." ^ 

1 Trevelyan, I, 102. The letters from college are well worth reading. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

On the first of October, 1824, two years after he had received 
the degree of Bachelor of Arts, he wrote his father that he was 
that morning elected Fellow, and that the position would make 
him almost independent financially for the next seven years. 

In 1824, too, he made his first address before a public 
assembly, — an antislavery address that probably gave Zachary 
Macaulay the happiest half hour of his life, that called out a 
" whirlwind of cheers " from the audience, and enthusiastic 
commendation from the Edi7iburgh Review. The next year 
Macaulay was asked to write for that famous periodical, then 
at the height of its political, social, and literary power. He 
contributed the essay on Milton and " hke Lord Byron he 
awoke one morning and found himself famous." The com- 
pliment for which he cared most — " the only commendation 
of his Hterary talent which even in the innermost domestic 
circle he was ever known to repeat " — came from Jeffrey, the 
editor, when he acknowledged the receipt of the manuscript : 
" The more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked 
up that style." 

When Macaulay entered college, his father considered him- 
self worth at least a hundred thousand pounds ; but soon after- 
ward he lost his money and the eldest son found the other 
children looking to him for guidance and support. As if it 
were the most natural thing in the world, he drew freely on 
his income from the fellowship and his occasional contribu- 
tions to the Edifiburgh. He was the sunshine of the home, 
and apparently only those who knew him there got the best of 
his brilliancy and wit. 

In 1826 he was called to the bar, but he was becoming 
more and more interested in public affairs and longed to be 
in Parliament. In 1830 Lord Lansdowne, who had been 
much impressed by Macaulay's articles on Mill, and by his 
high moral and private character, gave him the opportunity 
to represent Calne — " on the eve of the most momentous 



INTRODUCTION XV 

conflict," says Trevelyan, " that ever was fought out by speech 
and vote within the walls of a senate-house." ^ When the Reform 
Bill was introduced, the opposition laughed contemptuously at 
the impossibility of disfranchising, wholly or in part, a hundred 
and ten boroughs for the sake of securing a fair representation 
of the United Kingdom in the House of Commons. Two days 
later Macaulay made the first of his Reform speeches, and 
" when he sat down, the Speaker sent for him, and told him 
that, in all his prolonged experience, he had never seen the 
House in such a state of excitement." That not only unset- 
tled the House of Commons but put an end to the question 
whether he should give his time to law or to politics. During 
the next three years he devoted himself to Parliament. Enter- 
ing with his whole soul into the thickest of the fight for reform, 
he made a speech on the second reading of the Reform Bill 
which no less a critic than Jeffrey said put him " clearly at the 
head of the great speakers, if not the debaters, of the House." ^ 

Naturally the social advantages of the position appealed to 
Macaulay. He appreciated the freedom, the good fellowship, 
the spirit of equality among the members. '* For the space of 
three seasons he dined out almost nightly " ; and for a man 
who at a time when his parliamentary fame was highest, was so 
reduced that he sold the gold medals he had won at Cambridge, 
— though "he was never for a moment in debt," — it was 
sometimes convenient to be a lion. Yet this "sitting up in 
the House of Commons till three o'clock five days in the 
week, and getting an indigestion at great dinners the remain- 
ing two," would not have been the first choice of a man 
whose greatest joy " in the midst of all this praise " was to 
think of the pleasure which his success would give to his 
father and his sisters. 

In June, 1832, the bill which Macaulay had supported so 
zealously and so eloquently at every stage of the fight, finally 
1 Trevelyan, I, 136. '^ Ibid., 179. 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

became an act. As a reward the great orator was appointed a 
commissioner of the Board of Control, which represented the 
crown in its relations to the East Indian directors. He held 
this commissionership only eighteen months, however, for as a 
means of reducing expenses the Whig Government suppressed 
it. It is to Macaulay's everlasting credit that he voted for this 
economic measure at a time when his Trinity fellowship was 
about to expire, and when the removal from office left him 
penniless. 

Impatient to choose the first Reformed Parliament, the great 
cities were looking about that autumn for worthy representa- 
tives. The Whigs of Leeds got Macaulay's promise to stand 
for that town as soon as it became a parliamentary borough. 
His attitude toward the electors whose votes meant bread to 
him was as refreshing as it was striking. His frank opinions 
they should have at all times, but pledges never. They should 
choose their representative cautiously and then confide in him 
liberally. Such independence was not relished in many quar- 
ters, but Macaulay answered the remonstrants with even more 
vigor: "It is not necessary to my happiness that I should 
sit in Parliament ; but it is necessary to my happiness that I 
should possess, in Parliament or out of Parliament, the con- 
sciousness of having done what is right." ^ 

His appointment as Secretary to the Board of Control was a 
help financially, and his return to Parliament by Leeds proved 
to be of very great assistance. Matters were going smoothly 
when the Government introduced their Slavery Bill. To 
Zachary Macaulay, who had always been a zealous abolition- 
ist, the measure was not satisfactory. To please him the son 
opposed it. In order that he might be free to criticise the 
bill, simply as a member of Parliament, he resigned his position 
in the Cabinet, although both he and his father thought this 
course of action would be fatal to his career. A son whose 
1 Trevelyan, I, 249-253. 



INTRODUCTION xvu 

devotion to his father leads him to such lengths is not always 

so promptly rewarded as Macaulay was in this instance, for the 

resignation was not accepted, the bill was amended, and the 

* 
Ministers were as friendly as ever. 

Up to this time he had earned little money by his writing. 
After giving his days to India and his nights to improving the 
condition of the Treasury, he could get only snatches of time 
for turning off the essays which we read with so much care. 
With a family depending on him he now reahzed fully the need 
not of riches but of a competence. He could live by his pen 
or by office ; but he could not think seriously of writing to 
" relieve the emptiness of the pocket " rather than '' the fullness 
of the mind," and if he must earn this competence through 
office, the sooner he was through with the business the better. 
So it was largely for the sake of his aged father, his younger 
brother, and his dearly loved sisters, that he accepted an 
appointment as legal adviser to the Supreme Council of India. 

He and his sister Hannah sailed for India in February, 1834. 
He tells us that he read during the whole voyage : the Iliad 
and Odyssey^ Virgil, Horace, Ccesar's Commentaries^ Bacon's 
De Augmejitis^ Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Don Quixote^ 
Gibbon's i^^w^, Mill's India^ all the seventy volumes of Voltaire, 
Sismondi's History of Frafice, and the seven thick foHos of the 
Biographia Britannica. On his arrival he plunged into the 
new work. Not satisfied with the immense amount already 
assigned him, he saw two large opportunities to do more by 
serving on two committees. As president of the Committee 
of Public Instruction he substituted for Oriental learning the 
introduction and promotion of European Hterature and sci- 
ence among the natives ; as president of the Law Commis- 
sion he took the initiative in framing the famous Penal Code, 
the value of which must be judged from the facts that " hardly 
any questions have arisen upon it which have had to be deter- 
mined by the courts, and that few and slight amendments 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

have had to be made by the Legislature." ^ He worked 
patiently, yet he longed to be back in England, and it was a great 
relief when in 1838, his work done, his competence saved, he 
was able to return. He was too late to see his father again, for 
Zachary Macaulay had died while the son was on the way home. 

In the fall he went to Italy with his mind full of associations 
and traditions. His biographer says that every line of good 
poetry which the fame or the beauty of this country had in- 
spired "rose almost involuntarily to his lips." On this occa- 
sion he gave some of those geographical and topographical 
touches to the Lays of Ancient Rome " which set his spirited 
stanzas ringing in the ear of a traveller in Rome at every 
turn." Much as he enjoyed Italy, he soon began to long for 
his regular work, and the following February found him in 
London again. In March he was unanimously elected to t/ie 
Club, and he was making the most of his leisure for books 
when he felt it his duty to enter Parliament for Edinburgh. 
"Office was never, within my memory, so little attractive," he 
writes, "and therefore, I fear, I cannot, as a man of spirit, 
flinch, if it is offered to me." Without any show of reluctance 
he was made Secretary at War and given a seat in the Cabi- 
net. To this position the man who had begun life " without 
rank, fortune, or private interest " had risen before his fortieth 
birthday. On March 14, 1840, he wrote his intimate friend, 
Mr. ElHs, a good account of his life at that time.^ 

" I have got through my estimates [for army expenses] with 
flying colors ; made a long speech of figures and details with- 
out hesitation or mistake of any sort ; stood catechising on all 
sorts of questions ; and got six millions of public money in 
the course of an hour or two. I rather like the sort of work, 
and I have some aptitude for it. I find business pretty nearly 
enough to occupy all my time ; and if I have a few minutes 
to myself, I spend them with my sister and niece ; so that, 
1 Trevelyan, I, 3C8. 2 /^/,/.^ n^ 53^ 



INTRODUCTION xix 

except while I am dressing and undressing, I get no reading 
at all. I do not know but that it is as well for me to live 
thus for a time. I became too mere a bookworm in India, 
and on my voyage home. Exercise, they say, assists diges- 
tion; and it may be that some months of hard official and 
Parliamentary work may make my studies more nourishing." 

But the Queen's advisers did not have the confidence of 
the country, there was a change of government, and Macau- 
lay lost his office. How the loss affected him we may gather 
from a part of his letter to Mr. Napier, at that time the editor 
of the Edinburgh Review. 

" I can truly say that I have not, for many years, been so 
happy as I am at present. ... I am free. I am independ- 
ent. I am in Parliament, as honorably seated as man can be. 
My family is comfortably off. I have leisure for literature, 
yet I am not reduced to the necessity of writing for money. 
If I had to choose a lot from all that there are in human life, 
I am not sure that I should prefer any to that which has 
fallen to me. I am sincerely and thoroughly contented." ^ 

Carlyle says that a biography should answer two questions : 
(i) what and how produced was the effect of society on the 
man ; and (2) what and how produced was his effect on 
society.^ To the careful reader of Trevelyan's Life the words 
just quoted from Macaulay will give a pretty fair notion of 
what, up to this time, Macaulay had got from society. The 
other question, what he gave to society, is perhaps best 
answered in the account of the remaining years of his life. 
In Parliament, in society, and in literary and political circles 
throughout the country there was the feeling that he had 
won the respect and good will of all, and that he was to do 
something still greater. What this greater thing was to be was 
the question that confronted Macaulay for the next few years. 

1 Trevelyan, II, 89. 

2 Carlyle^ s Essay on Burns, p. 5, Ginn's edition. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

Certainly it was not the publishing of his Lays^ although 
one hundred thousand copies of them were sold by the year 
1875. Nor was it the collecting and reprinting of his Essays, 
although they have given hundreds of thousands of minds a 
taste for letters and a desire for knowledge. One could hardly 
call it the delivery of those vehement and effective parlia- 
mentary speeches with which he held his audience spellbound, 
even if one of them did secure the passing of the Copyright 
Bill in 1842 in practically its present form. But while attend- 
ing to these other matters, Macaulay had on his mind an 
undertaking which was destined to satisfy, as far as he 
carried it toward completion, the hopes of his most enthusi- 
astic admirers. In 1841 he had written to Napier, "I shall 
not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a 
few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of 
young ladies." ^ In order that he might give all his attention 
to this one project he soon stopped writing for the Edinburgh 
Review; he denied himself no little of the pleasure he had 
been getting from society ; he gave up more parliamentary 
honors than most others could ever hope to win. At last, in 
1848, he pubhshed the first volumes of a work that met with 
a heartier welcome than the English-speaking world had given 
to any historical work since the coming of Gibbon's Decline 
and Eall of the Roman Empire. That these volumes of The 
History of England were the result of a very different kind 
of effort from that with which Macaulay had dashed off the 
essays, may be inferred from a sentence of Thackeray's, which 
Trevelyan says is no exaggeration : "He reads twenty books 
to write a sentence ; he travels a hundred miles to make a 
line of description." ^ After all critics may say for or against 
the History, it remains to note that Macaulay did what he 
undertook : he wrote a history that is more readable than 
most novels. 

1 Trevelyan, II, 96. 2 For Trevelyan's evidence, see II, 191. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

In other ways we can trace his "effect on society." He was 
chosen Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow in 1848. 
Prince Albert tried, but in vain, to induce him to become 
Professor of Modern History at Cambridge in 1849. He was 
asked, but declined — urging the plea that he was not a debater 
— to join the Cabinet in 1852. The same year the people of 
Edinburgh, ashamed of their failure to reelect him five years 
before, chose him to represent them in ParHament. Meantime 
he had been well and happy. Inhis journal for October 25, 1850, 
he wrote : " My birthday. I am fifty. Well, I have had a happy 
life. I do not know that anybody, whom I have seen close, has 
had a happier. Some things I regret ; but, on the whole, who 
is better off? I have not children of my own, it is true ; but I 
have children whom I love as if they were my own, and who, I 
believe, love me. I wish that the next ten years may be as 
happy as the last ten. But I rather wish it than hope it." ^ 

Macaulay may have surmised that the good health which 
had been such an important factor in keeping him happy 
would not last much longer. At any rate his last election to 
the House of Commons was followed by an illness from which 
he never fully recovered, but through which, for seven years, 
"he maintained his industry, his courage, his patience, and 
his benevolence." Occasionally he treated the House to a 
"torrent of words," but he understood that he must husband 
his powers for work on books. To protect himself from a 
bookseller who advertised an edition of his speeches, he mad« 
and published a selection of his own, many of which he had to 
write from memory. Then he continued his work on the 
History. Some of the time he had to " be resolute and work 
doggedly," as Johnson said. " He almost gave up letter- 
writing ; he quite gave up society ; and at last he had not 
leisure even for his diary." ^ Yet of this immense labor he 
said, " It is the business and the pleasure of my life." 
1 Trevelyan, II, 244. 2 /^;V/.^ -^21. 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

As a result of this steady toil the writer secured an enviable 
influence abroad. He was made a member of several foreign 
academies, and translations have turned the History into a 
dozen tongues. At home, among the numerous honors, he 
was presented with the degree of Doctor of Civil Law at 
Oxford, and made a peer — Baron of Rothley. Naturally 
before receiving this last honor he had withdrawn from Parlia- 
ment, and from 1856 to the end of his life he enjoyed a 
retired home, with a fine garden. He had plenty of time to 
cash the famous check for twenty thousand pounds which the 
first edition of the History brought him, and to invest and 
spend it as he pleased. On his fifty-seventh birthday he wrote 
in his diary, " What is much more important to my happi- 
ness than wealth, titles, and even fame, those whom I love are 
well and happy, and very kind and affectionate to me." 

One of the chief sources of his happiness, one to which he 
was particularly indebted these last days, was his love of read- 
ing. He could no longer read fourteen books of the Odyssey 
at a stretch while out for a walk, but in the quiet of his library 
he enjoyed the companionship of the author he happened to 
be reading as perhaps few men could. He who could command 
any society in London failed to find any that he preferred, at 
breakfast or at dinner, to the company of Boswell ; and it seems 
natural and fitting that he should be found on that last December 
day, in 1859, "in the library, seated in his easy-chair, and 
dressed as usual, with his book on the table beside him." 

Equally fitting is it that in Poet's Corner, Westminster 
Abbey, the resting place of Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, and 
Addison, there should lie a stone with this inscription : 

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay, 

Born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, 

October 25TH, 1800. 

Died at Holly Lodge, Campdfn Hill, 

December 28th, 1859. 

" His body is buried in peace, 

but his name liveth for evermore." 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

For he left behind him a great and honorable name, and every 
action of his Ufe was " as clear and transparent as one of his 
own sentences." His biography reveals the dutiful son, the 
affectionate brother, the true friend, the honorable poUtician, 
the practical legislator, the eloquent speaker, the brilliant 
author. It shows unmistakably that greater than all his works 
was the man. 

II. MACAULAY AND HIS LITERARY CONTEM- 
PORARIES 

The very year in which the last volumes of Johnson's Lives 
of the Poets were published, 1781, Burns began to do his best 
work. In 1796 Burns died. In 1798, two years before 
Macaulay was born, Wordsworth and Coleridge published the 
first of the Lyrical Ballads^ which included The Rime of the 
Ancient Mariner. Like Burns, yet in a way entirely his own, 
Wordsworth was the poet of Nature and of Man, and this little 
volume was the beginning of much spontaneous poetry which 
in the following years proved a refreshing change from the 
polished couplets which had been in fashion. Instead of Pope 
and Addison and Johnson, in whose time literary men cared 
more for books than for social reforms, more for manner than 
for matter, came Scott, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Landor, and 
Southey with their irrepressible originahty. 

Before Macaulay's day Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and 
Smollett had each contributed something to the novel. Dur- 
ing his Ufetime came practically all of the best work of Miss 
Austen, Scott, Cooper, Lytton, DisraeH, Hawthorne, the Brontes, 
Dickens, Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, TroUope, and Kingsley. 
George Eliot's Adam Bede appeared the year he died. 

Other prominent prose writers were Hallam, Grote, Milman, 
Froude, Mill, Ruskin, and Carlyle. L71 Mcmoriam and Mrs. 
Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese wqyq published in 1850, 
and Browning's The Ri?ig and the Book came out in 1868. 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

As to Macaulay's relations with his Hterary contemporaries, 
it must be understood that he gave practically his whole atten- 
tion to the times of which he read and wrote, and to the men 
who made those times interesting. Scientists were making 
important discoveries day by day, but his concern was not 
with them, even at a time when Darwin was writing his 
Origin of Species. It was not clear to him that philosophical 
speculations like Carlyle's might do much to better the con- 
dition of humanity. He finished Wordsworth's Prelude only 
to be disgusted with " the old flimsy philosophy about the 
effect of scenery on the mind " and " the endless wildernesses 
of dull, flat, prosaic twaddle." Although he read an infinite 
variety of contemporary literature he said he would not attempt 
to dissect works of imagination. In 1838, when Napier wished 
him to review Lockhart's Life of Scott for \htEdi?tburg/i Review, 
he replied that he enjoyed many of Scott's performances as 
keenly as anybody, but that many could criticise them far 
better. He added : "Surely it would be desirable that some 
person who knew Sir Walter, who had at least seen him and 
spoken with him, should be charged with this article. Many 
people are living who had a most intimate acquaintance with 
him. I know no more of him than I know of Dryden or Addi- 
son, and not a tenth part so much as I know of Swift, Cowper, 
or Johnson." ^ He turned instinctively to the old books, the 
books that he had read again and again : to Homer, Aris- 
tophanes, Horace, Herodotus, Addison, Swift, Fielding. There 
was at least one writer of fiction in his time to whom he wa^ 
always loyal. On one occasion when he had been reading 
Dickens and Pliny and Miss Austen at the same time, he de- 
clared that Northanger Abbey, although *' the work of a girl," 
was in his opinion " worth all Dickens and Pliny together." 

What he did for humanity he did as a practical man of 
affairs, at home alike in the Cabinet and in popular assemblies. 

1 Trevelyan, II, 15. 



INTRODUCTION XXV 

While Carlyle in the midst of his gloomy life was toiling 
heroically to banish shams and to get at the True, the Real, 
Macaulay, who was reasonably satisfied with the past and 
the present, and hopeful of the future, was sifting from his 
vast treasury of information about the past what he believed 
to be significant in history and important in literature. He 
had none of the feeling that Ruskin had, that it was his duty 
to turn reformer, but what he did toward educating his readers 
he did in the way he most enjoyed. 

III. THE STUDY OF MACAULAY 

Once for all it must be remembered that Macaulay had no 
intention of being studied as a text-book, and we must deal 
with him fairly. First we should read the Life through at a 
sitting without consulting a note, just as we read an article in 
the Atlantic Monthly or the Eficydopcedia Britantiica. We 
should rush on with the " torrent of words " to the end to see 
what it is all about, and to get an impression of the article as 
a whole. As Johnson says : " Let him that is yet unacquainted 
with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the 
highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play from 
the first scene to the last with utter negligence of all his com- 
mentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not 
stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is 
strongly engaged let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name 
of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through bright- 
ness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption ; let him 
preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest 
in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased 
let him attempt exactness and read the commentators." 

Macaulay attracts attention not only to what he says but 
also to the way in which he says it. In examining his style 
it will be a good plan to ask ourselves whether the writer ever 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

wanders from the subject, or whether every part of the Life 
contributes something to the one subject under discussion. 
Naturally we find ourselves making topics, such for example 
as Johnson's Youth, His^ Father, At Oxford. A list of 
these topics gives us a bird's-eye view of the whole field 
and enables us to examine the composition more critically. 
Has the writer arranged the topics in the natural order? 
Does he give too much space to the treatment of any one 
topic? Might any of them be omitted to advantage? 

Having examined the larger divisions, we may profitably turn 
our attention to the parts which constitute these divisions, the 
paragraphs. First let us see whether he goes easily from one 
paragraph to the next. For example, is the first sentence 
of paragraph 2 a good connecting link with what precedes? 
In looking through the Life for these links, we should make 
up our minds whether they are studied or spontaneous. 

Then let us test the unity of the paragraphs. Can each 
paragraph be summed up in a single sentence ? Does a com- 
bination of the opening and the closing sentence ever serve 
the purpose? Does one or the other of these ever answer 
of itself? Has every sentence some bearing on the main 
thought, or might some sentences be omitted as well as not? 

It will be equally profitable, at this point, to test the coher- 
ence of half a dozen paragraphs. Does each sentence lead 
up naturally to the next? Can the order of sentences be 
changed to advantage? When the sentences in a paragraph 
hold together firmly, we should point out the cause ; when 
coherence is lacking, we should try to discover to what its 
absence is due. 

Then comes the question of emphasis. Let us see whether 
we can find two or three paragraphs in which Macaulay suc- 
ceeds particularly well in emphasizing the main point. If we 
find three, let us see whether he accompUshes his purpose in 
the same way each time. 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

For those of us who are still willing to learn something from 
Macaulay's style, it is worth while to study the sentences. 
Selecting two or three of the most interesting paragraphs, we 
may make the three tests: (i) Is each sentence a unit? 
(2) Is the relation of every word to the adjoining words 
absolutely clear? (3) Does the construction emphasize what 
is important? 

Then there is the vocabulary. Who does not enjoy the 
feeling that he is enlarging his vocabulary? An easy way 
of doing it is to read two or three times such a paragraph as 
the nineteenth, and then, with the book closed, to write as 
much of it as possible from memory. As it is not merely a 
large vocabulary that we wish, but a well chosen one, we shall 
do well to compare our version with Macaulay's and see in 
how many cases his word is better than ours. Have we, for 
example, equaled '* winning affability," or '' London mud," or 
"inhospitable door"? Is his word more effective than ours 
because it is more specific, or what is the reason? 

Before taking farewell of the Life of Johnson there is another 
use to which we may put the topics. We may use them as 
tests of our knowledge of the essay. If we can write or talk 
fully and definitely on each of the more important ones, we 
are sure to carry much food for thought away with us. The 
value of a review of this sort is evident from a glance at 
the following topics : Literary Life in London in Johnson's 
Time, Johnson's Love Affair, The Dictionary, The Turning 
Point in Johnson's Life, The Rambler, Rasselas, The Idler, 
His Shakspere, The Club [His Conversation], Boswell, 
The Thrales, His Fleet Street Establishment, The Lives of 
the Poets. 

As we read Macaulay we should be particularly careful to 
think for ourselves. Mr. Gladstone has said : " Wherever and 
whenever read, he will be read with fascination, with delight, 
with wonder. And with copious instruction too ; but also 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

with copious reserve, with questioning scrutiny, with liberty 
to reject, and with much exercise of that liberty." ^ 

This' means that we must follow him up, find out where he 
got his information, see whether in his enthusiasm he has 
exaggerated. Then, even if the critics do assure us that he 
is not one of the deep thinkers, one of the very great writers, 
we may go on committing his Lays to heart, studying his 
Essays, and admiring those wonderfully faithful pictures in 
his History. More than all else, as the years go by, we are 
likely to find ourselves indebted to him for arousing interest, 
for leading us to further reading. 

IV. MACAULAY ON JOHNSON 

Among the " hasty and imperfect articles " which Macaulay 
wrote for the Edinburgh Review was one on Croker's Edition 
of Boswell's Life of Johnson. It appeared in 1831 and gave 
the writer a welcome opportunity to show the inaccuracy and 
unreliability of Croker, one of his political opponents. Nearly 
one half of his space he gave to criticising the editor, and that 
part it seems wise to omit in this edition ; for we care more 
about Boswell and Johnson. Twenty-five years later, in 1856, 
when Macaulay had ceased to write for reviews, but sent an 
occasional article to the EncydopcEdia Britaiiiiica, he wrote 
what is generally called the Life of Samuel fohfison. The 
publisher of the encyclopaedia writes that it was entirely to 
Macaulay's friendly feeling that he was *' indebted for those 
literary gems, which could not have been purchased with 
money"; that "he made it a stipulation of his contributing 
that remuneration should not be so much as mentioned." 
The other articles referred to are those on Atterbury, .Bunyan, 
(ioldsmith, and William Pitt. One writer calls them *' perfect 
models of artistic condensation." 

1 The Quarterly Revieiv, July, 1 876. 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

It is interesting to compare the later work with the earUer : 
to see whether there is any evidence of improvement in 
Macaulay's use of English, and whether he gives us a better 
notion of Boswell and Johnson. 

V. REFERENCE BOOKS 

The book to which we naturally turn first to see whether 
Macaulay knows his subject is Boswell's Life of Johns o?i ; not 
the edition in six volumes by Dr. George B. Hill, scholarly 
as it is, but some such edition as Mr. Mowbray Morris's, 
published by the Macmillan Company in one volume. When 
we read Boswell the first time, to get his conception of his 
hero, we do not care to loiter on every page for notes, inter- 
esting and instructive as they may be after the first rapid read- 
ing. This single volume is so cheap that no one need hesitate 
to buy it ; then he may mark it up as much as he pleases and 
enjoy his own book. The conscientious student need not feel 
obliged to read every word of every episode, but may feel per- 
fectly free to skip whatever does not appeal to him, perfectly 
certain that before he has turned ten pages he will stumble on 
something worth while. 

The book which will do more than all others to illuminate 
the life and character of Macaulay is The Life and Letters of 
Lord Macaulay, written by his nephew, G. Otto Trevelyan. 
Harper & Brothers, the publishers, have bound the two 
volumes in one which is so inexpensive that every school 
library may easily afford it. Some critics think this Life 
ranks with Boswell's fohnson. It certainly is one of the most 
readable biographies in the English language. Other useful 
books are numerous, but among them all Carlyle's essay in 
reply to Macaulay's Essay Ofi Bosweirs Life of fohnson stands 
out first. 



XXX INTRODUCTION 



BOSWELL 

Arblay. Madame d'. Memoirs of Dr. Burney. (Contains " the 
most vivid account of Boswell's manner when in company 
with Dr. Johnson.") 

Boswelliana : the Commonplace Book of James Boswell. London, 

1874. 
Carlyle, Thomas. Boswell's Life of Johnson. 
Fitzgerald, Percy, M.A., F.S.A. Life of James Boswell with 

four portraits. 2 vols. London: i8gi. 
Leask, W, Keith. James Boswell. (Famous Scots Series.) 

Edinburgh : 1897. 
Stephen, Leslie. James Boswell (in the Dictionary of National 

Biography). 

Johnson 

Birrell, a. Dr. Johnson (in Obiter Dicta, Second Series). 

Boswell, James. Life of Johnson including Boswell's Journal 
of a Tour to the Hebrides, etc., edited by George Birkbeck 
Hill, D.C.L., Pembroke College, Oxford, in six volumes. 
Oxford, 1897. (" Boswell's famous book has never before 
been annotated with equal enthusiasm, learning, and indus- 
try." — Austin Dobson.) 
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., including a Journal of 
his Tour to the Hebrides, by James Boswell, Esq. New 
edition, with numerous additions and notes, by The Right 
Hon. John Wilson Croker, M.P., to which are added ... 50 
engraved illustrations. In ten volumes. London: 1839. 
The Life of Johnson edited by Alexander Napier, M.A., Lon- 
don, 1884, also has several engravings. 
Dr. Henry Morley's edition of Boswell's work is illustrated 
with portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds. George Routledge 
& Sons, London, 1885. 

Brougham, Henry, Lord, F.R.S. Lives of Men of Letters of 
the Time of George III. London: 1856. 

Gardiner, S. R. A Student's History of England. 

GossE, Edmund W. History of Eighteenth Century Literature. 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

Green, J. R. A Short History of the English People. 

Hill, George Birkbeck, D.C.L. Dr. Johnson, His Friends and 

His Critics. London: 1878. 
HosTE, J. W. Johnson and His Circle. London : Jarrold & Sons. 
Johnson's Chief Live^ of the Poets, Being those of Milton, Dry- 
den, Swift, Addison, Pope, Gray, and Macaulay's Life of 
Johnson, with a Preface by Matthew Arnold, to which are 
appended Macaulay's and Carlyle's Essays on Boswell's Life 
of Johnson. Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1879. 
Johnson Club Papers by Various Hands. London : T. Fisher 

Unwin, 1899. 
Johnsoniana : Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., by 
Mrs. Piozzi, Bishop Percy, and others, together with the 
Diary of Dr. Campbell and extracts from that of Madame 
D' Arblay, newly collected and edited by Robina Napier. 
(Engravings and various autographs.) George Bell and 
Sons, London, 1884. 
Johnson, Samuel. The Idler. In the series of British Essayists. 
Lives of the Poets. A New Edition, with Notes and Introduc- 
tion by Arthur Waugh, in six volumes. Scribner's Sons, 1896. 
London. In Hales's Longer English Poems. 
The Rambler. In the series of British Essayists. 
Rasselas. Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, or Henry Holt & Co. 
The Vanity of Human Wishes. In Hales's Longer English 

Poems and Syle's From Milton to Tennyson. 
The Works of Samuel Johnson. In nine volumes. Oxford. 
Lecky, W. E. H. History of England in the Eighteenth Century. 
Piozzi, Mrs. Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson during the 
Last Twenty Years of his Life, i 786. 
Same, in the cheap National Series. The Cassell Company. 
Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. 1788. 
Stephen, Leslie. History of English Thought in the Eighteenth 
Century. } 

Dr. Johnson's Writings (in Hours in a Library, Vol. II). 
Samuel Johnson. Dictionary of National Biography. 
Samuel Johnson. English Men of Letters Series. Harper 
& Brothers. (Cloth or paper.) 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

Macaulay 

Bagehot, Walter. Thomas Babington Macaulay. (In Literary 
Studies.) 

Brewer, E. Cobham, LL.D. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 
The Historic Note-book. 

Clark, J. Scott. Thomas Babington Macaulay. (In A Study 
of English Prose Writers.) 

Gladstone, W. E. Gleanings of Past Years. 

Harrison, Frederic. Lord Macaulay. (In Early Victorian 
Literature.) 

Macaulay, Thomas B. Critical and Historical Essays, con- 
tributed to the Edi7ib7i?-gh Review. Trevelyan edition, in 
two volumes. Longmans, Green, and Co. 
The History of England from the Accession of James II. 
Works. Complete edition, by Lady Trevelyan, in eight vol- 
umes. Longmans, Green, and Co. 

Minto, William. Manual of English Pro'se Literature. 

MoRisoN, J. Cotter. Macaulay. (In English Men of Letters, 
edited by John Morley.) 

Pattison, Mark. Macaulay. (In the Encyclopaedia Britannica.) 

Stephen, Leslie. Macaulay. (In the Dictionary of National 
Biography; in Hours in a Library.) 

Trevelyan, G Otto. The Life and Letters of Lc;d Macaulay, 
in two volumes ; also two volumes in one. 

London 
Besant, Walter. London in the Eighteenth Century. 
Hare, Augustus John. Walks in London. 
HuTTON, Laurence. Literary Landmarks of London. 
Wheatley, Henry B. London, Past and Present. 

'/^ 

VI. CHRONOLOGY OF MACAULAY'S LIFE AND 

WORKS 
1800. Born. 

1 8 14. Sent to boarding school. 

1 8 18. Entered Trinity College, Cambridge. 

1822. Graduated as B.A. 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

1824. Degree of M.A. Elected Fellow. First public speech. 

1825. First contribution to the Edmburgh Review: essay on 

Milton. 

1826. Called to the bar. 

1828. Commissioner of Bankruptcy. 

1 830. Member of Parliament for Calne. First speech in Parliament. 

1831. Speeches on the Reform Bill. Essay on Boswell's Life of 

Johnson. 

1 833. Member of Parliament for Leeds. Essay on Horace Walpole. 

1834. Essay on William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. Sailed for India 

as legal adviser to the Supreme Council. 

1837. Penal Code finished. 

1838. His father died. Returned to England. Visited Italy. 

1 839. Elected to the Club. Member of Parliament for Edinburgh. 

Secretary at War. 

1840. Essay on Lord Clive. 

1 84 1. Reelected to Parliament for Edinburgh. Essay on Warren 

Hastings. 

1842. Lays of Ancient Rome published. 

1843. Essay on Madame d'Arblay. Essay on the Life and 

Writings of Addison. 

1844. Essay on the Earl of Chatham. (The second essay on this 

subject, and his last contribution to the Edinburgh 
Review.) 
1846. Paymaster-General of the Army. Defeated in Edinburgh 
election. 

1848. First two volumes of his History of England. 

1849. Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. 

1852. Again elected to Parliament from Edinburgh, although not 
a candidate. Failing health. 

1854. Life of John Bunyan. 

1855. Third and fourth volumes of his History of England. (The 

fifth volume appeared after his death.) 

1856. Resigned his seat in Parliament. Life of Samuel Johnson. 

Life of Oliver Goldsmith. 

1857. Became Baron Macaulay of Rothley. 
1859. Life of William Pitt. Died December 28. 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

{December^ iS^6) 



I. Samuel Johnson, /one of the most eminent English 
writers of the eighteenth century, was the son of JV^ichael 
Johnson, who was, at the beginning of that century, a magis- 
trate of Lichfield, and a bookseller of great note in the mid- 
land counties.\ Michael's abiUties and attainments seem to 5 
have been considerable. He was so well acquainted with 
the contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale, that the 
country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought 
him an oracle on points of learning. Between him and the 
clergy, indeed, there was a strong religious and political sym- 10 
pathy. He was a zealous churchman, and, though he had 
qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to 
the sovereigns in^ possession, was to the last a Jacobite in heart. 
At his house, a house which is still pointed out to every 
traveller who visits Lichfield,, Samuel was born on the i8th of 15 
September 1709. In the child, the physical, intellectual, and 
moral peculiarities which afterwards distinguished the man were 
plainly discernible ; great muscular strength accompanied by 
much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quickness of 
parts, with a morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination ; 20 
a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. 
He had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which 
it was beyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents 
were weak enough to believe that the royal touch was a specific 



2 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

for this malady. In his third year he was taken up to London, 
inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by the court 
chaplains, and stroked and presented with a piece of gold by 
Queen Anne. One of his earliest recollections was that of a 
5 stately lady (in a diamond stomacher and a long black hood.) 
Her hand was applied in vain. The boy's features, which 
were originally noble and not irregular, were distorted by his 
malady. His cheeks were deeply scarred. He lost for a time 
the sight of one eye ; and he saw but very imperfectly with 

10 the others But the force of his mind overcame every impedi- 
ment. Indolent as he was, he acquired knowledge with such 
ease and rapidity that at every school to which he was sent he 
was soon the best scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided 
at home, and was left to his own devices. He learned much at 

1 5 this time,(though his studies were without guidance and without 
plan) He ransacked his father's shelves, dipped into a multi- 
tude of books, read what was interesting, and passed over what 
was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or no useful 
knowledge in such a way : but much that was dull to ordinary 

20 lads was interesting to Samuel. He read little Greek ; jor his 
proficiency in that language was not such that he could take 
much pleasure in the masters of Attic poetry and eloquence.) 
But he had left school a good Latinist ; and he soon acquired, 
^\\ the large and miscellaneous library of which he now had the 

25 command^an extensive knowledge of Latin Uterature. That 
Augustan delicacy of taste which is the boast of the great public 
schools of England he never possessed. But he was early 
familiar with some classical writers who were quite unknown 
to the best scholars in the sixth form at Eton. He was pecul- 

30 iarly attracted by the works of the great restorers of learning. 
Once, while searching for some apples, he found a huge folio 
volume of Petrarch's works. The name excited his curiosity ; 
and he eagerly devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, the 
diction and versification of his own Latin compositions show 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 3 

that he had paid at least as much attention to modern copies 
from the antique fc to the original models.' 

2. While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his family 
was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old Michael Johnson was 
much better qualified to pore upon books, and to talk about 5 
them,, than to trade in themy jHis business declined ; his debts 
increased ; it was with difficulty that the daily expenses of his 
household were defrayed. It was out of his power to support 
his son at either university ; but a wealthy neighbour offered 
assistance ; and, (in reliance on promises which proved to be of 10 
very little valuej Samuel was entered at Pembroke College, 
Oxford. When the young scholar presented himself to the 
rulers of that society, they were amazeei not more by his ungainly 
figure and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive 
and curious information which he had picked up during many 15 
months of desultory .but not unprofitable study. On the first 
day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macro- 
bius ; and one of the most learned among them declared that 
he had never known a freshman of equal attainments. 

3. At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three years. 20 
He was poor, even to raggedness ; and his appearance excited 

a mirth and a pity which were equally intolerable to his haughty 
spirit. He was driven from the quadrangle of Christ Church 
by the sneering looks which the members of that aristocratical 
society cast i^t the holes in his shoes.) Some charitable person 25 
placed a new pair at his door ; but he spurned them away in a 
fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and ungov- 
ernable. No opulent gentleman commoner, panting (for one- 
and- twenty,) could have treated the academical authorities with 
more gross disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be 30 
seen under the gate of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with 
his effigy, haranguing a circle of lads, over whom, (in spite of 
his tattered gown and dirty linen,] his wit and audacity gave 
him an undisputed ascendency. In every mutiny against the 



4 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was 
pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abili- 
ties and acquirements. He had early made himself known 
by turning Pope's Messiah into Latin verse. The style and 
5 rhythm, indeed, were not exactly Virgilian ; but the transla- 
tion found many admirers, and was read with pleasure by 
Pope himself. 

4. ^The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the 
ordinary course of things, have become a Bachelor oT Arts : 

10 but he was at the end of his resources. Those promises of 
support on which he had relied had not been kept. His 
family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford trades- 
men were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the 
autumn of 1731, he was under the necessity of quitting the 

15 university without a degree. In the following winter his father 
died. The old man left but a pittance ; and of that pittance 
almost the whole was appropriated to the support of his widow. 
The property to which Samuel succeeded amounted to no more 
than twenty pounds. 

20 5. His life, during the thirty years which followed, was 
one hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle 
needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by the sufferings 
of an unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the young 
man left the university, his hereditary malady had broken forth 

25 in a singularly cruel f(^rm. He had become an incurable 
hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all 
his life, or at least not perfectly sane ; and, in truth, eccen- 
tricities less strange than his have often been thought grounds 
sufficient for absolving felons, and for setting aside wills. His 

30 grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and 
sometimes terrified people who did not know him. At a dinner 
table he would, in a fit of absence,- stoop down and twitch off 
a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly 
ejaculating a clause of the Lord's Prayer, He would conceive 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 5 

an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a 
great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set 
his heart on touching every post in the streets through which he 
walked.) If by any chance he missed a post, he would go back 
a hundred yards and repair the omission. Under the influence 5 
of his disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his 
imagination morbidly active. _ At one time he would stand por- ' 
ing on the town clock without being able to tell the hour. At 
another, he would distinctly hear his mother, who was many 
miles off, calUng him by his name. But this was not the 10 
worst. A deep melancholy took possession of him, and gave 
a dark tinge i to all his views of human nature and of human 
destiny^ Such wretchedness as he endured has driven many 
men to shoot themselves or drown themselves. But he was 
under no temptation to commit suicide. He was sick of life; 15 
but he was afraid of death ; and he shuddered at every sight 
or sound which reminded him of the inevitable hour. In reli- 
gion he found but little comfort during his long and frequent 
fits of dejection ;, for his religion partook of his own character^ 
The light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a 20 
direct line, or with its own pure splendour. The rays had 
to struggle through a disturbing medium ; they reached him 
refracted, dulled and discoloured by the thick gloom which 
had settled on his soul ; and, though they might be sufficiently 
clear to guide him, were too dim to cheer him. 25 

6. With such infirmities of body and mind, this celebrated 
man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the 
world. He remained during about five years in the midland 
counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace and his early home, he 
had inherited some friends and acquired others. He was kindly 30 
noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay officer of noble family, who 
happened to be quartered there. Gilbert Walmesley, regis-- 
trar of the ecclesiastical court of the diocese, a man of dis- 
tinguished parts, learning, and knowledge of the world, did 



6 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

himself honour by patronising the young adventurer, whose 
repulsive person, unpolished manners, and squalid garb moved 
many of the petty aristocracy of the neighbourhood to laughter 
or to disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no 
5 way of earning a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar 
school in Leicestershire ; he resided as a humble companion 
in the house of a country gentleman ; but a life of dependence 
was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired to Bir- 
mingham, and there earned a few guineas by literary drudgery. 

10 In that town he printed a translation, httle noticed at the 
time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. 
He then put forth proposals for pubHshing by subscription the 
poems of Pohtian,(with notes containing a history of modern 
Latin verse/: but subscriptions did not come in ; and the volume 

15 never appeared. 

7. While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson 
fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth 
Porter, a widow who had children as old as himself. To ordi- 
nary spectators, the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse 

20 woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colours, 
and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which were 
not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To John- 
son, however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was 
too weak to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom, and who 

25 had seldom or never been in the same room with a woman of 
real fashion, his Titty, as he called her, was the most beautiful, 
graceful, and accomplished of her sex. That his admiration 
was unfeigned cannot be doubted ; (for she was as poor as 
himselfy She accepted, with a readiness which did her little 

30 honour, the addresses of a suitor who might have been her 
son. The marriage, however,. iii spite of occasional wranglings, 
proved happier than might have been expected. The lover 
continued to be under the illusions of the wedding-day till the 
lady^.died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monument Y 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON Jjr ^ 

placed an inscription extolling the charms of her person and 
of her manners ; and when, long after her decease, he had 
occasion to mention her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half 
ludicrous, half pathetic, " Pretty creature ! " 

8. His marriage made it necessary for him to exert 4iim- 5 
self more strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a 
house in the neighbourhood of his native town, and advertised 
for pupils. But eighteen months passed away ; and only three 
pupils came to his academy. Indeed, his appearance was so 
strange, and his temper so violent, that his schoolroom must 10 
have resembled an ogre's den. Nor was the tawdry painted 
grandmother whom he called his Titty well .qualified to make 
provision for the comfort of young gentlemen. David Garrick, 
who was one of the pupils, used, many years later, to throw 
the best company of London into convulsions of laughter by 15 
mimicking the endearments of this extraordinary pair. 

9. At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, 
determined to seek his fortune in the capital as a literary 
adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three acts of the 
tragedy of Irene in manuscript, and two or three letters of 20 
introduction from his friend Walmesley. 

10. Never, since literature became a calling in England, had 
it been a less gainful calling than at the time when Johnson 
took up his residence in London. In the preceding genera- 
tion a writer of eminent merit was sure to be munificently 25 
rewarded by the government. The least that he could expect 
was a pension or a sinecure place ; and, if he showed any apti- 
tude for politics, he might hope to be a member of parliament, 

a ford of the treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of state. It 
would be easy, on the other hand, to name several writers 30 
of the nineteenth century of whom the least successful has 
received forty thousand pounds from the booksellers. But 
Johnson entered on his vocation in the most dreary part of 
the dreary interval which separated two ages of prosperity. 



8 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Literature had ceased to flourish under the patronage of the 
great, and had not begun to flourish under the patronage of 
the public. One man of letters, indeed. Pope, had acquired 
by his pen what was then considered as a handsome fortune, 
5 and hved on a footing of equality with nobles and ministers of 
state. But this was a solitary exception. Even an author 
whose reputation was established, and whose works were popu- 
lar, such an author as Thomson, whose Seasons were in every 
library, such an author as Fielding, whose Pasquin had had a 

lo greater run than any drama since The Beggar's Opera, was 
sometimes glad to obtain, by pawning his best coat, the means 
of dining on tripe at a cookshop underground, where he could 
wipe his hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a New- 
foundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what humili- 

15 ations and privations must have awaited the novice who had 
still to earn a name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson 
applied for employment measured with a scornful eye that 
athletic though uncouth frame, and exclaimed, '' You had 
better get a porter's knot, and carry trunks." Nor was the 

20 advice bad; for a porter was likely to be as plentifully fed, 
and as comfortably lodged, as a poet. 

II. Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson 
was able to form any Hterary connection from which he could 
expect more than bread for the day which was passing over 

25 him. He never forgot the generosity with which Hervey, who 
was now residing in London, relieved his wants during this 
time of trial. " Harry Hervey," said the old philosopher 
many years later, " was a vicious man ; but he was very 
kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey I shall love him." 

30 At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts which 
were made more agreeable by contrast. But in general he 
dined, and thought that he dined well, on sixpenny worth 
of meat, and a pennyworth of bread, at an alehouse near 
Drury Lane. 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 9 

12. The effect of the privations and sufferings which he 
endured at this time was discernible to the last in his temper 
and his deportment. His manners had never been courtly. 
They now became almost savage. Being frequently under the 
necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts, he became a 5 
confirmed sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat down 

to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous 
greediness. Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables 
of the great, the sight of food affected him as it affects wild 
beasts and birds of prey. His taste in cookery, formed in 10 
subterranean ordinaries and alamode beefshops,'] was far from 
delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to liave near him 
a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie made with 
rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his 
veins swelled, and the moisture broke out on his forehead. 15 
The affronts which his poverty emboldened stupid and low- 
minded men to offer to him would have broken a mean spirit 
into sycophancy, but made him rude even to ferocity. Unhap- 
pily the insolence which, while it was defensive, was pardon- 
able, and in some sense respectable, accompanied him into 20 
societies where he was treated with courtesy and kindness. He 
was repeatedly provoked into striking those who had taken 
liberties with him. All the sufferers, however, were wise 
enough to abstain from talking about their beatings, except 
Osborne, the most rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who 25 
proclaimed everywhere that he had been knocked down by the 
huge fellow whom he had hired to puff the Harleian Library. 

13. About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in 
London, he was fortunate enough to obtain regular employ- 
ment from Cave, an enterprising and intelligent bookseller, who 30 
was proprietor and editor of The Gejitlema7i's Magaziiie. That 
journal, just entering on the ninth year of its long existence, 
was the only periodical work in the kingdom which then had 
what would now be called a large circulation. It was, indeed, 



10 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

the chief source of paiiiamentary intelHgence. It was not then 
safe, even during a recess, )to pubHsh an account of the pro- 
ceedings of either House without some disguise. Cave, how- 
ever, ventured to entertain his readers with what he called 
5 "Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput." France 
was Blefuscu ; London was Mildendo : pounds were sprugs : the 
Duke of Newcastle was the Nardac Secretary of State : Lord 
Hardwicke was the Hurgo Hickrad : and William Pulteney 
was Wingul Pulnub. To write the speeches was,(auring several 

10 years,)the business of Johnson. He was generally furnished 
with notes, meagre indeed, and inaccurate, of what had been 
said ; but sometimes he had to find arguments and eloquence 
both for the ministry and for the opposition. He was him- 
self a Tory, not from rational conviction — ifor his serious 

15 opinion was that one form of government was just as good or 
as bad as another) — but from mere passion, such as inflamed 
the Capulets against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman 
circus against the Greens. In his infancy he had heard so 
much talk about the villanies of the Whigs, and the dangers 

20 of the Church, that he had become a furious partisan when 
he could scarcely speak. Before he was three he had insisted 
on being taken to hear Sacheverell preach at Lichfield Cathe- 
dral, and had listened to the sermon with as much respect, 
and probably with as much intelligence, as any Staffordshire 

25 squire in the congregation.^ The work which had been begun 
in the nursery had been completed by the university. Oxford, 
when Johnson resided there, was the most Jacobitical place 
in England ; and Pembroke was one of the most Jacobitical 
colleges in Oxford. The prejudices which he brought up 

30 to London were scarcely less absurd than those of his own 
Tom Tempest. Charles 11. and James II. were two of the 
best kings that ever reigned. Laud, a poor creature who 
never did, said, or wrote anything indicating more than the 
ordinary capacity of an old woman, W3S a prodigy of parts and 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON II 

learning over whose tomb Art and Genius still continued to 
weep. Hampden deserved no more honourable name than 
that of " the zealot of rebellion." Even the ship money, con- 
demned not less decidedly by Falkland and Clarendon than by 
the bitterest Roundheads, Johnson would not pronounce to 5 
have been an unconstitutional impost. Under a government, 
the mildest that had ever been known in the world — under a 
government, which allowed to the people an unprecedented 
liberty of speech and action — he fancied that he was a slave ; 
he assailed the ministry with obloquy which refuted itself, and 10 
regretted the lost freedom and happiness of those golden days 

(in which a writer who had taken but one-tenth part of the 
license allowed to him would have , been pilloried, mangled 
with the shears, whipped at the cart's tail, and flung into a 
noisome dungeon to die.) He hated dissenters and stock- 15 
jobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parliaments, and 
continental connections. He long had an aversion to the 
Scotch, an aversion of which he could not remember the com- 
mencement, but which, he owned, had probably originated in 
his abhorrence of the conduct of the nation during the Great 20 
Rebellion. It is easy to guess in what manner debates on 
great party questions were likely to be reported by a man 
whose judgment was so much disordered by party spirit. A 
show of fairness was indeed necessary to the prosperity of the 
Magazine. But Johnson long afterwards owned that, though 25 
he had saved appearances, he had taken care that the Whig 
dogs ^ould not have the best of it ; and, in fact, every pas- 
sage which has lived, every passage which bears the marks of 
his higher faculties, is put into the mouth of some member 
of the opposition. 30 

14. A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these 
obscure labours, he published a work which at once placed 
him high among the writers of his age. It is probable that 
what he had suffered during his first year in London had often 



12 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which 
Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy 
man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tot- 
tering garrets which overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's 
5 admirable imitations of Horace's Satires and Epistles had 
recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by mauy 
readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had 
done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The 
enterprise was bold, and yet judicious. For between Johnson 

lo and Juvenal there was much in common, much more certainly 

than between Pope and Horace. 

,15. Johnson's London appeared without his name in 

May 1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and 

vigorous poem : but the sale was rapid, and the success com- 

15 plete. A second edition was required within a week. Those 
small critics who are always desirous to lower established rep- 
utations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist 
was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of^ 
hterature. It ought to be remembered, to the honour of Pope, - 

20 that he joined heartily in the applause with which the appear- 
ance of a rival genius was welcomed. He made inquiries about 
the author of London. Such a man, he said, could not long 
be concealed. The name was soon discovered ; and Pope, 
with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academical 

25 degree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor 
young poet. The attempt failed, and Johnson remained a 
bookseller's hack. ^ . 

""' ^16. It does not appear that these two men, the most 
eminent writer of the generation which was going out, and 

30 the most eminent writer of the generation which was coming 
in, ever saw each other. They lived in very different circles, 
one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by starving 
pamphleteers and indexmakers. Among Johnson's associates 
at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 13 ' 

were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his 
arms through two holes in his blanket, who composed very 
respectable sacred poetry when he was sober, and who was at 
last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk ; Hoole, 
surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending 5 
to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the 
board where he sate cross-legged ; and the penitent impostor, 
George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humble 
lodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers, 
indulged himself at night with literary and theological con- 10 
vers^ion at an alehouse in the city. But the most remark- 
able'of the persons with whom at this time Johnson consorted 
was Richard Savage, an earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice, 
who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue 
ribands in Saint James's Square, and had lain with fifty pounds' 1 5 
weight of iron on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. 
This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last 
into abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed himw 
His patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by 
the riotous profusion with which he squandered their bounty, 20 
and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their 
advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison 
and champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to 
borrow a guinea. If his questing had been unsuccessful, he 
appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken meat, 25 
and lay down to rest under the Piazza of Covent Garden in 
warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he could get 
to the furnace of a glass house. Yet, in his misery, he was still 
an agreeable companion. He had an inexhaustible store of 
anecdotes about that gay and brilliant world from which he 30 
was now an outcast. He had observed the great men of both 
parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders 
of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard 
the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over 



14 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

decent. During some months Savage lived in the closest 
familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends parted, '^ not 
without tears. Johnson remained in London to drudge for 
Cave. Savage went to the West of England, lived there as 
5 he had lived everywhere, and, in 1743, died, penniless and 
heart-broken, in Bristol gaol. 

17. Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was 
strongly excited about his extraordinary character, and his 
not less extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared 

10 widely different from the catchpenny lives of eminent men 
which were then a staple article of manufacture in Grub 
Street. The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety ; 
and the writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element 
of our language. But the little work, with all its faults, was 

15 a masterpiece. No finer specimen of literary biography existed 
in any language, living or dead ; and a discerning critic might 
have confidently predicted that the author was destined to be 
the founder of a new school of English eloquence. 

18. The Hfe of Savage was anonymous; but it was well 
20 known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer. Dur- 
ing the three years which followed, he produced no important 
work ; but he was not, and indeed could not be, idle. The fame 
of his abilities and learning continued to grow. Warburton 
pronounced him a man of parts and genius ; and the praise 

25 of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's 
reputation that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers com- 
bined to employ him in the arduous work of preparing a 
Dictionary of the English language, in two folio volumes. The 
sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred 

30 guineas ; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men 
of letters who assisted him in the humbler parts of his task. 

19. The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the 
Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated 
for the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON I 5 

and the delicacy of his taste. He was acknowledged to be 
the finest speaker in the House of Lords. He had recently 
governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture, with eminent 
firmness, wisdom, and humanity ; and he had since become 
Secretary of State. He received Johnson's homage with the 5 
most winning affability, and requited it with a few guineas, 
bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but was by no 
means desirous to see all his carpets blackened with the London 
mud, and his soups and wines thrown to right and left over 
the gowns of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine gentlemen, 10 
by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and 
uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow, and ate 
like a cormorant. During some time Johnson continued to 
call on his patron, but after being repeatedly told by the 
porter that his lordship was not at home, took the hint, and 15 
ceased to present himself at the inhospitable door. 

20. Johnson had flattered himself that he should have com- 
pleted his Dictionary by the end of 1750; but it was not till 
1755 that he at length gave his huge volumes to the world. 
During the seven years which he passed in the drudgery of 20 
penning definitions and marking quotations for transcription, 
he sought for relaxation in literary labour of a more agreeable 
kind. In 1749 he published the Vanity of Human Wishes, 
an excellent imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It is 
in truth not easy to say whether the palm belongs to the 25 
ancient or to the modern poet. The couplets in which the 
fall of Wolsey is described, though lofty and sonorous, are feeble 
when compared with the wonderful lines which bring before us 
all Rome in tumult pn the day of the fall of Sejanus, the laurels 
on the doorposts, the white bull stalking towards the Capitol, 30 
the statues rolling down from their pedestals, the flatterers of 
the disgraced minister running to see him dragged with a hook 
through the streets, and to have a kick at his carcase before 
it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in the 



l6 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

concluding passage the Christian moralist has not made the 
most of his advantages, and has fallen decidedly short of 
the sublimity of his pagan model. On the other hand, Juve- 
nal's Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles ; and Johnson's 
5 vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries of a liter- 
ary life must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal's lamentation 
over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero. 

2 1. For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes 
Johnson received only fifteen guineas. 

lo 2 2. A few days after the publication of this poem, his 
tragedy, begim many years before, was brought on the stage. 
His pupil, David Garrick, had, in 1741, made his appearance 
on a humble stage in Goodman's Fields, had at once risen to the 
first place among actors, and was now, after several years of 

15 almost uninterrupted success, manager of Drury Lane Theatre. 
The relation between him and his old preceptor was of a very 
singular kind. They repelled each other strongly, and yet 
attracted each other strongly. Nature had made them of very 
different clay ; and circumstances had fully brought out the 

20 natural peculiarities of both. Sudden prosperity had turned 
Garrick's head. Continued adversity had soured Johnson's 
temper. Johnson saw with more envy than became so great 
a man the villa, the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet, which 
the little mimic had got by repeating, with grimaces and ges- 

25 ticulations, what wiser men had written ; and the exquisitely 
sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought that, 
while all the rest of the world was applauding him, he could 
obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible 
to despise, scarcely any compliment not acidulated with scorn. 

30 Yet the two Lichfield men had so many early recollections in 
common, and sympathised with each other on so many points 
on which they sympathised with nobody else in the vast popu- 
lation of the capital, that, though the master was often pro- 
voked by the monkey-like impertinence of the pupil, and the 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON i; 

pupil by the bearish rudeness of the master, they remained 
friends till they were parted by death. Garrick now brought 
Irene out, with alterations sufficient to displease the author, 
yet not sufficient to make the piece pleasing to the audience. 
'I'he public, however, listened with little emotion, but with 5 
much civility, to five acts of monotonous declamation. After 
nine representations the play was withdrawn. It is, indeed, 
altogether unsuited to the stage, and, even when perused in 
the closet, will be found hardly worthy of the author. He had 
not the slightest notion of what blank verse should be. A lo 
change in the last syllable of every other line would make the 
versification of the Vanity of Human Wishes closely resemble 
the versification of Irene. The poet, however, cleared, by 
his benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright of his 
tragedy, about three hundred pounds, then a great sum in 15 
his estimation. 

23. About a year after the representation of Irene, he 
began to publish a series of short essays on morals, manners, 
and literature. This species of composition had been brought 
into fashion by the success of the Tatler, and by the still more 20 
brilliant success of the Spectator. A crowd of small writers 
had vainly attempted to rival Addison. The Lay Monastery, 
the Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, the Champion, 
and other works of the same kind, had had their short day. 
None of them had obtained a permanent place in our litera- 25 
ture ; and they are now to be found only in the libraries of 
the curious. At length Johnson undertook the adventure in 
which so many aspirants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year 
after the appearance of the last number of the Spectator 
appeared the first number of the Rambler. From March 30 
1750 to March 1752, this paper continued to come out every 
Tuesday and Saturday. 

24. From the first the Rambler was enthusiastically admired 
by a few eminent men. Richardson, when only five numbers 



l8 A.IFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

had appeared,) pronounced it equal, if not superior, to the 
Spectator. Voung and Hartley expressed their approbation 
not less warmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose many faults 
indifference to the claims of genius and learning cannot be 
5 reckoned,, solicited the acquaintance of the writer. In conse- 
quence probably of the good offices of Dodington, who was 
then the confidential adviser of Prince Frederic, two of His 
Royal Highness's gentlemen carried a gracious message to 
the printing office, and ordered seven copies for Leicester 

lo House. But these overtures seem to have been very coldly 

received. Johnson had had enough of the patronage of the 

great to last him all his life, and was not disposed to haunt 

any other door as he had haunted the door of Chesterfield. 

25. By the public the Rambler was at first very coldly 

15 received. Though the price of a number was only twopence, 
the sale did not amount to five hundred. The profits were 
therefore very small. But as soon as the flying leaves were 
collected and reprinted they became popular. The author 
lived to see thirteen thousand copies spread over England 

20 alone. Separate editions were published for the Scotch and 
Irish markets. A large party pronounced the style perfect, so 
absolutely perfect that in some essays it would be impossible 
for the writer himself to alter a single word for the better. 
Another party, not less numerous, vehemently accused him of 

25 having corrupted the purity of the Enghsh tongue. The best 
critics admitted that his diction was too monotonous, too obvi- 
ously artificial, and now and then turgid even to absurdity. 
But they did justice to the acuteness of his observations on 
morals and manners, to the constant precision and frequent 

30 brilliancy of his language, to the weighty and magnificent elo- 
quence of many serious passages, and to the solemn yet pleas- 
ing humour of some of the lighter papers. On the question 
of precedence between Addison and Johnson, a question 
which, seventy years ago, was much disputed, posterity has 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON , 19 

pronounced a decision from which there is no appeaL Sir 
Roger, his chaplain and his butler, Will Wimble and Will 
Honeycomb, the Vision of Mirza, the Journal of the Retired 
Citizen, the Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves 
of Hilpah and Shalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the 5 
Visit to the Abbey, are known to everybody. But many men 
and women, even of highly cultivated minds, are unacquainted 
with Squire Bluster and Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Venustulus, 
the Allegory of Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of the Revolu- 
tions of a Garret, and the sad fate of Aningait and Ajut. 10 

26. The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy 
hour. Mrs. Johnson had been given over by the physicians. 
Three days later she died. She left her husband almost 
broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised to see a 
man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, 15 
and denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of 
supplying a silly ,\ affected old woman with superfluities, which 
she accepted with but little gratitude.) But all his affection 
had been concentrated on her. He had neither brother nor 
sister, neither son nor daughter. To him she was beautiful as 20 
the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. Her opinion of his 
writings was more important to him than the voice of the 
pit of Drury Lane Theatre or the judgment of the Monthly 
Review. The chief support which had sustained him through 
the most arduous labour of his life was the hope that she would 25 
enjoy the fame and the profit which he anticipated from his 
Dictionary. She was gone ; and in that vast labyrinth of 
streets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings, 
he was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to set himself, vas 
he expressed it, doggedly to work. After three more laborious 30 
years, the Dictionary was at length complete. 

27. It had been generally supposed that this great work 
would be dedicated to the eloquent and accomplished noble- 
man to whom the prospectus had been addressed. He well 



20 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

knew the value of such a compliment ; and therefore, when 
the day of publication drew near, "he exerted himself to soothe, 
by a show of zealous and at the same time of delicate and 
judicious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly wounded. 
5 Since the Ramblers had ceased to appear, the town had been 
entertained by a journal called The World, to which many men 
of high rank and fashion contributed. In two successive num- 
bers of the World the Dictionary was, to use the modern phrase,\ 
puffed with wonderful skill. The writings of Johnson were 

10 warmly praised. It was proposed that he should be invested 
with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over our 
language, and that his decisions about the meaning and the 
spelling of words should be received as final. His two folios, 
it was said, would of course be bought by everybody who could 

15 afford to buy them. It was soon known that these papers were 
written by Chesterfield. But the just resentment of Johnson 
was not to be so appeased. In a letter written with singular 
energy and dignity of thought and language, he repelled the 
tardy advances of his patron. The Dictionary came forth with- 

20 out a dedication. In the preface the author truly declared that 
he owed nothing to the great, and described the difficulties with 
which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically 
that the ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his 
f^ime. Home Tooke, never could read that passage without tears. 

25 28. The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, 
and something more than justice. The best lexicographer 
may well be content if his productions are received by the 
world with cold esteem. But Johnson's Dictionary was hailed 
with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has ever excited. 

30 It was indeed the first dictionary which could be read with 
pleasure. The definitions show so much acuteness of thought 
and command of language, and the passages quoted from poets, 
divines, and philosophers are so skilfully selected, that a leisure 
hour may always be very agreeably spent in turning over the 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 21 

pages. The faults of the book resolve themselves, for the most 
part, Unto one great fault. Johnson was a wretched etymolo- 
gist. He knew little or nothing of any Teutonic language 
except English, which indeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a 
Teutonic language ; and thus he was absolutely at the mercy 5 
of Junius and Skinner. 

29. The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, added 
nothing to his pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred guineas 
which the booksellers had agreed to pay him had been advanced 
and spent before the last sheets issued from the press. It is 10 
painful to relate that, twice in the course of the year which 
followed the publication of this great work, he was arrested 
and carried to spunging-houses, and that he was twice indebted 
for his liberty to his excellent friend Richardson. It was still 
necessary for the man who had been formally saluted by the 15 
highest authority as Dictator of the English language to supply 
his wants by constant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. He 
proposed to bring out an edition of Shakspeare by subscription ; 
and many subscribers sent in their names and laid down their 
money ; ,but he soon found the task so little to his taste that 20 
he turned to more attractive employments. He contributed 
many papers to a new monthly journal, which was called the 
Literary Magazine. Few of these papers have much interest ; 

(but among them was the very best thing that he ever wrotej a 
masterpiece both of reasoning and of satirical pleasantry, the 25 
review of Jenyns's Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil. 

30. In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a 
series of essays, entitled The Idler. During two years these 
essays continued to appear weekly. They were eagerly read, 
widely circulated, and, indeed, impudently pirated, while they 3^ 
were still in the original form, and had a large sale when col- 
lected into volumes. The Idler may be described as a second 
part of the Rambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker 
than the first part. 



22 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

r 

3 1 . While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother ,/who 

had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was 
long since he had seen her ; but he had not failed to contribute 
largely, out of his small means, to her comfort. In order to 
5 defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay some debts which 
she had left, he wrote a little book in a single week, and sent 
off the sheets to the press without reading them over. A 
hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright ; and the 
purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their bargain ; 
lo for the book was Rasselas. 

32. The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies 
as Miss Lydia Languish must have been grievously disappointed 
when they found that the new volume from the circulating 
library was little more than a dissertation on the author's 

1 5 favourite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes ; that the Prince 
of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and the Princess without a 
lover ; and that the story set the hero and the heroine down 
exactly where it had taken them up. The style was the sub- 
ject of much eager controversy. The Monthly Review and the 

20 Critical Review took different sides. Many readers pronounced 
the writer a pompous pedant, who would never use a word of 
two syllables where it was possible to use a word, of six, and 
who could not make a waiting woman relate her adventures 
without balancing every noun with another noun, and every 

25 epithet with another epithet. Another party, not less zealous, 
cited with delight numerous passages in which weighty mean- 
ing was expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendour. 
And both the censure and the praise were merited. 

2iZ' About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the 

30 critics ; and yet the faults of the plan might seem to invite 
severe criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakspeare 
for neglecting the proprieties of time and place, and for ascrib- 
ing to one age or nation the manners and opinions of another. 
Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in this way more grievously 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 23 

than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are 
evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the eighteenth century : 
(for the Europe which Imlac describes is the Europe of the 
eighteenth century ; and the inmates of the Happy Valley 
talk familiarly of that law of gravitation which Newton dis- 5 
covered, and which was not fully received even at Cambridge 
till the eighteenth century./ What a real company of Abyssin- 
ians would have been may be learned from Bruce's Travels. 
But Johnson, not ^content with turning filthy savages, ignorant 
of their letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut from living 10 
cows,\nto philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as himself 
or hts friend Burke, and into ladies as highly accomplished as 
Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the whole domestic 
system of England to Egypt. Into a land of harems, a land of 
polygamy, a land where women are married without ever being 1 5 
seen, he introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our ball- 
rooms. In a land where there is boundless liberty of divorce, 
wedlock is described as the indissoluble compact. "A youth 
and maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, 
exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream 20 
of each other. Such," says Rasselas, "is the common process 
of marriage."} Such it may have been, and may still be, in 
London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who was guilty 
of such improprieties had little right to blame the poet who 
made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented Julio Romano 25 
as flourishing in the days of the oracle of Delphi. 

34. By such exertions as have been described, Johnson 
supported himself till the year 1762. In that year a great 
change in his circumstances took place. He had from a child 
been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His Jacobite preju- 30 
dices had been exhibited with little disguise both in his works 
and in his conversation. Even in his massy and elaborate 
Dictionary, he had, with a strange want of taste and judgment, 
inserted bitter and contumelious reflections on the Whig party. 



24 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

The excise, which was a favourite resource of Whig financiers! 
he had designated as a hateful tax. He had railed against the 
commissioners of excise in language so coarse that they had 
seriously thought of prosecuting him. He had with difficulty 

5 been prevented from holding up the Lord Privy Seal by name 
as an example of the meaning of the word " renegade." A 
pension he had defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray 
his country ; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a stipend 
to obey a master. It seemed unlikely that the author of these 

10 definitions would himself be pensioned. But that was a time 
of wonders. George the Third had ascended the throne ; and 
had, in the course of a few months, -disgusted many of the old 
friends and conciliated many of the old enemies of his house. 
The city was becoming mutinous. Oxford was becoming loyal. 

15 Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring. Somersets and 
Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The head of the 
treasury was now Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and could have 
no objection to Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be thought 
a patron of men of letters ; and Johnson was one of the most 

20 eminent and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. 
A pension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, and 
with very little hesitation accepted. 

"**" 35. This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way 
of life. For the first time since his boyhood he no longer felt 

25 the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was at liberty, 
after thirty years of anxiety and drudgery;, to indulge his con- 
stitutional indolence, to lie in bed till tWo in the afternoon, 
and to sit up talking till four in the morning, without fearing 
either the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer. 

30 36. One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to 
perform. He had received large subscriptions for his promised 
edition of Shakspeare ; he had lived on those subscriptions 
during some years ; and he could not without disgrace omit 
to perform his part of the contract. His friends repeatedly 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 25 

exhorted him to make an effort ; and he repeatedly resolved 
to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his 
resolutions, ' month followed month, year followed year, and 
nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his idleness ; 
he determined, as often as he received the sacrament, that 5 
he would no longer doze away and trifle away his time ; but 
the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and sacrament. 
His private notes at this time are made up of self-reproaches. 
"My indolence," he wrote on Easter eve in 1764, ''has sunk 
into grosser sluggishness. A kind of strange oblivion has over- 10 
spread me, so that I know not what has become of the last 
year." Easter 1765 came, and found him still in the same 
state. "My time," he wrote, "has been unprofitably spent, 
and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. My 
memory grows confused, and I know not how the days pass 15 
over me." / Happily for his honot^r, the charm which held him 
captive was at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand. 
He had been weak enough to pay serious attention to a story 
about a ghost which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had 
actually gone himself with some of his friends, at one in the 20 
morning, to St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of 
receiving a communication from the perturbed spirit. But the 
spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately 
silent ; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven had 
been amusing herself by making fools of so many philosophers. 25 
Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk with popularity, 
and burning with party spirit, was looking for some man of 
established fame and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the 
Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pom- 
poso, asked where the book was which had been so long 30 
promised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused the 
great moralist of cheating. This terrible word proved effec- 
tual ; and in October 1765 appeared, after a delay of nine 
years, the new edition of Shakspeare. 



26 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

37. This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, 
but added nothing to the fame of his abiUties and learning. 
The preface, though it contains some good passages, is not in 
his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in which 
5 he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he had 
during many years observed human life and human nature. 
The best specimen is the note on the character of Polonius. 
Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister's 
admirable examination of Hamlet. But here praise must end. 

10 It would be difficult to name a more slovenly, a more worthless 
edition of any great classic. The reader may turn over play 
after play without finding one happy conjectural emendation, 
or one ingenious and satisfactory explanation of a passage 
which had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had^ in 

15 his prospectus,. told the world that he was peculiarly fitted for 
the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as a lexi- 
cographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of 
the English language than any of his predecessors. That his 
knowledge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But, 

20 unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of 
our literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor 
of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert 
a negative. Yet little will be risked by the assertion, that in 
the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not a 

25 single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan 
age, except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quota- 
tions are few. Johnson might easily, in a few months, j have 
made himself well acquainted with every old play that was 
extant. But it never seems to have occurred to him that this 

30 was a necessary preparation for the work which he had under- 
taken. He would doubtless have admitted that it would be 
the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with 
the works of ^schylus and Euripides to publish an edition of 
Sophocles. Yet he ventured to publish an edition of Shakspeare, 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 2/ 

/ . . . . \/ 

without having ever in his Hfe, as far as can be discovered, 

read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, 
Marlow, Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy y 
and scurrilous. Those who most loved and honoured him had 
little to say in praise of the manner in which he had discharged 5 
the duty of a commentator. He had, however, acquitted him- 
self of a debt which had long lain heavy on his conscience ; 
and he sank back into the repose from which the sting of satire 
had roused him. He long continued to live upon the fame 
which he had already won. He was honoured by the Univer- lo 
sity of Oxford with a Doctor's degree, by the Royal Academy 
with a professorship, and by the King with^ an interview, in 
which his Majesty most graciously expressed a hope that so 
excellent a writer would not cease to write. In the interval, 
however, between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published only two 15 
or three political tracts, (the longest of which he could have 
produced in forty-eight hours, jif he had worked as he worked 
on the Life of Savage and on Kasselas. 

38. But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. 
The influence exercised by his conversation, directly upon 20 
those with whom he lived, and indirectly on the whole literary 
world, was altogether without a parallel. His colloquial talents 
were indeed of the highest order. He had strong sense, quick 
discernment, wit, humour, immense knowledge of Hterature 
and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As 25 
respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sen- 
tence which dropped from his lips was as correct in structure 
as the most nicely balanced period of the Rambler. But in 
his talk there were no pompous triads, and little more than a 
fair proportion of words in osity and ation. All was simplicity, 30 
ease, and vigour. He uttered his short, weighty, and pointed 
sentences with a power of voice, and a justness and energy of 
emphasis, of which the effect was rather increased than dimin- 
ished by the rollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic 



28 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

gaspings and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence gen- 
erally ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling 
to sit down to his desk prevent him from giving instruction or 
entertainment orally. To discuss questions of taste, of learning, 
5 of casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible that it might 
have been printed without the alteration of a word, was to him 
no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved, as he said, to fold his 
legs and have his talk out. He was ready to bestow the over- 
flowings of his full mind on anybody who would start a subject, 

10 on a fellow- passenger in a stage coach, or on the person who 
sate at the same table with him in an eating-house. ' But his 
conversation was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he 
was surrounded by a few friends, ?T*vhose abilities and knowledge 
enabled them, as he once expressed it, to send him back every 

15 ball that he threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves 
into a club, which gradually became a formidable power in the 
commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced by this 
conclave on new books were speedily known over all London, 
and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, or to 

20 condemn the sheets to the service of the trunk-maker and the 
pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strange when we consider 
what great and various talents and acquirements met in the 
little fraternity. Goldsmith was the representative of poetry 
and light literature, Reynolds of the arts, Burke of political 

25 eloquence and political philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, 
the greatest historian, and Jones, the greatest linguist, of the 
age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inexhaustible pleas- 
antry, his incomparable mimicry, and his consummate knowl- 
edge of stage effect. Among the most constant attendants 

30 were two high-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound 
together by friendship, but of widely different characters and 
habits ; Bennet Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greek 
literature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity 
of his life ; and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 29 

his knowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his 
sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a society was not 
easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated. 
Burke might indeed have disputed the supremacy to which 
others were under the necessity of submitting. But Burke, 5 
though not generally a very patient listener, was content to 
take the second part when Johnson was present ; and the 
club itself, consisting of so many eminent men, is to this 
day popularly designated as Johnson's Club. 

39. Among the members of this celebrated body was one 10 
to whom it has owed the greater part of its celebrity/ yet who 
was regarded with little respect by his brethren, land had not 
without difficulty obtained a seat among them. This was 
James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an honourable 
name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and a bore, 15 
weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious to all who 
were acquainted with him. That he could not reason, that 
he had no wit, no humour, no eloquence, is apparent from 
his writings. And yet his writings are read beyond the Mis- 
sissippi, and under the Southern Cross, and are likely to be 20 
read as long as the English exists, either as a living or as a 
dead language. Nature had made him a slave and an idolater. 
His mind resembled those creepers which the botanists call 
parasites, and which can subsist only by clinging round the 
stems and imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He must 25 
have fastened himself on somebody. He might have fastened 
himself on Wilkes, and have become the fiercest patriot in the 
Bill of Rights Society. He might have fastened himself on 
Whitfield, and have become the loudest field preacher among 
the Calvinistic Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened him- 30 
self on Johnson. The pair might seem ill matched. For 
Johnson had early been prejudiced against Boswell's country. 
To a man of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable 
temper, the silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must have 



30 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

been as teasing as the constant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated 
to be ,questioned ; and Boswell was eternally catechising him 
on all kinds of subjects, and sometimes propounded such 
questions as " What would you do, sir, if you were locked up 
5 in a tower with a baby ? " Johnson was a water drinker; and 
Boswell was a wine-bibber, and indeed little better than a 
habitual sot. It was impossible that there should be perfect 
harmony between two such companions. Indeed, the great 
man was sometimes provoked into fits of passion in which he 

lo said things which the small man, during a few hours, seriously 
resented. Every quarrel, however, was soon made up. Dur- 
ing twenty years the disciple continued to worship the master : 
the master continued to scold the disciple, to sneer at him, and 
to love him. The two friends ordinarily resided at a great 

15 distance from each other. Boswell practised in the Parlia- 
ment House of Edinburgh, and could pay only occasional 
visits to London. During those visits his chief business was 
to watch Johnson, to discover all Johnson's habits, to turn the 
conversation to subjects about which Johnson was likely to 

20 say something remarkable, and to fill quarto note books with 
minutes of what Johnson had said. In this way were gathered 
the materials out of which was afterwards constructed the most 
interesting biographical work in the world. 'U^■ 

40. Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a 

25 connection less important indeed to his fame, but much more 
important to his happiness, than his connection with Boswell. 
Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent brewers in the king- 
dom, a man of sound and cultivated understanding, rigid prin- 
ciples, and liberal spirit, was married to one of those clever, 

30 kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women, who are per- 
petually doing or saying what is not exactly right, but who, do 
or say what they may, are always agreeable. In 1765 the 
Thrales became acquainted with Johnson, and the acquaint- 
ance ripened fast into friendship. They were astonished and 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 31 

delighted by the brilHancy of his conversation. They were 
flattered by finding that a man so widely celebrated, preferred 
their house to any other in London. Even the peculiarities 
which seemed to unfit him for civihsed society, his gesticula- 
tions, his rollings, his puffings, his mutterings, the strange way 5 
in which he put on his clothes, the ravenous eagerness with 
which he devoured his dinner, his fits of melancholy, his fits of 
anger, his frequent rudeness, his occasional ferocity, increased 
the interest which his new associates took in him. For these 
things were the cruel marks left behind by a Hfe which had 10 
been one long conflict with disease and with adversity. In a 
vulgar hack writer such oddities would have excited only dis- 
gust. But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue their effect 
was to add pity to admiration and esteem. Johnson soon had 
an apartment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more 15 
pleasant apartment at the villa of his friends on Streatham 
Common. A large part of every year he passed in those 
abodes, abodes which must have seemed magnificent and lux- 
urious indeed, when compared with the dens in which he had 
generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived 20 
from what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called " the 
endearing elegance of female friendship." Mrs. Thrale ralHed 
him, soothed him, coaxed him, and, if she sometimes provoked 
him by her flippancy, made ample amends by listening to his 
reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When he was 25 
diseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender of 
nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no contriv- 
ance that womanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly com- 
passion, could devise, was wanting to his sick-room. He 
requited her kindness by an affection pure as the affection of 30 
a father, yet delicately tinged with a gallantry which) though 
awkward, must have been more flattering than the attentions 
of a crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete, 
of Buck and Maccaroni. It should seem that a full half of 



32 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was passed under 
the roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the family sometimes 
to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once to Wales, and once 
to Paris. But he had at the same time a house in one of the 
5 narrow and gloomy courts on the north of Fleet Street. In 
the garrets was his library, a large and miscellaneous collec- 
tion of books, falling to pieces and begrimed with dust. On 
a lower floor he sometimes, but very rarely, regaled a friend 
with a plain dinner, a veal pie, or a leg of lamb and spinage, 

10 and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during 
his long absences. It was the home of the most extraordinary 

' assemblage of inmates that ever was brought together. At 
the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an old 
lady named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her 

15 blindness and her poverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and 
reproaches, he gave an asylum to another lady who was as poor 
as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose family he had known many 
years before in Staffordshire. Room was found for the daughter 
of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, ^who was 

20 generally addressed as Miss Carmichael,)but whom her gener- 
ous host called Polly. An old quack doctor named I.evett, 
who bled and dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and 
received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, 
and sometimes a little copper, completed this strange men- 

25 agerie. All these poor creatures were at constant war with each 
other, and with Johnson's negro servant Frank. Sometimes, 
indeed, they transferred their hostilities from the ser\'ant to 
the master, complained that a better table was not kept for 
them, and railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad to 

30 make his escape to Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And 
yet he, who was generally ^the haughtiest and most irritable 
of mankind, (who was but too prompt to resent anything which 
looked like a slight on the part of a purse-proud bookseller, 
or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 33 

mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the 
workhouse, insuhs more provoking than those for which he had 
knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. 
Year after year Mrs. WilHams and Mrs. DesmouUns, Polly, and 
Levett continued to torment him and to live upon him. 5 

41. The course of life (which has been described) was 
interrupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an important 
event. He had early read an account of the Hebrides, and 
had been much interested by learning that there was so near 
him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude and 10 
simple as in the middle ages. A wish to become intimately 
acquainted with a state of society so utterly unlike all that he 
had ever seen frequently crossed his mind. But it is not 
probable that his curiosity would have overcome his habitual 
sluggishness, and his love of the smoke, the mud, and the 15 
cries of London, had not Boswell importuned him to attempt 
the adventure, and offered to be his squire. At length, in 
August 1773, Johnson crossed the Highland fine, and plunged 
courageously into what was then considered, by most English- 
men, as a dreary and perilous wilderness. After wandering 20 
about two months through the Celtic region, 'sometimes in 
rude boats which did not protect him from the rain] /and 
sometimes on small shaggy ponies which could hardly bear 
his weighty he returned to his old haunts with a mind full of 
new images and new theories. During the following year he 25 
employed himself in recording his adventures. About the 
beginning of 1775, his Journey to the Hebrides was published, 
and was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conversation 
in all circles in which any attention was paid to literature. 
The book is still read with pleasure. The narrative is enter- 30 
taining ; the speculations, whether sound or unsound, are 
always ingenious ; and the style, though too stiff and pomp- 
ous, is somewhat easier and more graceful than that of his 
early writings. His j^rejudice against the Scotch had at 



34 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

length become little more than matter of jest ; and whatever 
remained of the old feeling had been effectually removed by 
the kind and respectful hospitality with which he had been 
received in every part of Scotland. It was, of course, not to 
5 be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presby- 
terian polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the 
hedgerows and parks of England should not be struck by the 
bareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even in 
censure Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most enlight- 

lo ened Scotchmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, , were 
well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotchmen were 
moved to anger by a little unpalatable truth which was 
mingled with much eulogy, and assailed him whom they chose 
to consider as the enemy of their country, with libels much 

15 more dishonourable to their country than anything that he 
had ever said or written. They published paragraphs in the 
newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, 
five-shilHng books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being 
blear-eyed ; another for being a pensioner ; a third informed 

20 the world that one of the Doctor's uncles had been convicted 
of felony in Scotland, and had found that there was in that 
country one tree capable of supporting the weight of an 
Englishman. Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved 
in the Journey to be an impudent forgery, threatened to take 

25 vengeance with a cane. The only effect of this threat was 
that Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery in the most 
contemptuous terms, and walked about, during some time, 
with a cudgel, which, if the impostor had not been too wise 
to encounter it, would assuredly have descended upon him, 

30 to borrow the sublime language of his own epic poem, " like 
a hammer on the red son of the furnace." 

42. Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. 
He had early resolved never to be drawn into controversy ; 
and he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastness which 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 35 

is the more extraordinary, because he was, both intellectually 
and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists are made. 
In conversation, he was a singularly eager, acute, and per- 
tinacious disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he 
had recourse to sophistry ; and, when heated by altercation, 5 
he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But, when 
he took his pen in his hand, his whole character seemed 
to be changed. A hundred bad writers misrepresented him 
and reviled him ; but not one of the hundred could boast of 
having been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even 10 
of a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hen- 
dersons did their best to annoy him, in the hope that he would 
give them importance by answering them. But the reader will 
in vain search his works for any allusion to Kenrick or Camp- 
bell, to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on 15 
vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the 
combat in a detestable Latin hexameter. 

^' Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum." 

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned, 
(both from his own observation and from literary history, 20 
(in which he was deeply read, that the place of books in 
the public estimation is fixed, not by what is written about 
them, but by what is written in them ; and that an author 
whose works are likely to live is very unwise if he stoops to 
wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. He 25 
always maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could 
be kept up only by being beaten back, as well as beaten for- 
ward, and which would soon fall if there were only one battle- 
dore. No saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine 
apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever written down 30 
but by himself. 

43. Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the 
Journey to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his 



36 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

envious assailants could have done, and to a certain extent 
succeeded in writing himself down. The disputes between 
England and her American colonies had reached a point at 
which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil war was 

5 evidently impending ; and the ministers seem to have thought 
that the eloquence of Johnson might with • advantage be 
employed to inflame the nation against the opposition here, 
and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had already 
written two or three tracts in defence of the foreign and 

lo domestic policy of the government ; and thosip tracts, (though 
hardly worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd of 
pamphlets which lay on the counters of Almon and Stockdale. 
But his Taxation no Tyranny was a pitiable failure. The very 
title was a silly phrase, which can have been recommended 

15 to his choice by nothing but a jingling alliteration which he 
ought to have despised. The arguments were such as boys 
use in debating societies. The pleasantry was as awkward as 
the gambols of a hippopotamus. Even Boswell was forced to 
own that, in this unfortunate piece, he could detect no trace 

20 of his master's powers. The general opinion was that the 
strong faculties which had produced the Dictionary and the 
Rambler were beginning to feel the effect of time and of 
disease, and that the old man would best consult his credit 
by writing no more. 

25 44. But this was a great mistake. \Fohnson had foiled, not 
because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote Ras- 
selas in the evenings of a week, but because he had foolishly 
chosen, or suffered others to choose for him, a subject such as 
he would at no time have been competent to treaM He was 

30 in no sense a statesman. He never willingly read or thought 
or talked about affairs of state. (He loved biography, literary 
history, the history of manners ; but political history was 
positively distasteful to him.j The question at issue between 
the colonies and the mother country was a question about 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 37 

which he had really nothing to say. He failed, therefore, as 
the greatest men must fail when they attempt to do that for 
which they are unfit ;/'as Burke would have failed if Burke 
had tried to write comedies like those of Sheridan -] /as Rey- 
nolds would have failed if Reynolds had tried to paint land- 5 
scapes like those of Wilson.) Happily, Johnson soon had an 
opportunity of proving most signally that his failure was not 
to be ascribed to intellectual decay. 

45. On Easter eve 1777, some persons, deputed by a meet- 
ing which consisted of forty of the first booksellers in London, 10 
called upon him. Though he had some scruples about doing 
business at that season, he received his visitors with much civil- 
ity. They came to inform him that a new edition of the English 
poets, (from Cowley down wards J was in contemplation, and to ask 
him to furnish short biographical prefaces. He readily under- 15 
took the task, a task for which he was pre-eminently quahfied. ) 
His knowledge of the literary history of England since the 
Restoration was unrivalled. That knowledge he had derived 
partly from books, and partly from sources which had long been 
closed ; from old Grub Street traditions ; from the talk of for- 20 
gotten poetasters and pamphleteers who had long been lying 
in parish vaults ; from the recollections of such men as Gilbert 
Walmesley, who had conversed with the wits of Button's ; Gibber, 
who had mutilated the plays of two generations of dramatists ; 
Orrery, who had been admitted to the society of Swift ; and 25 
Savage, who had rendered services of no very honourable kind 
to Pope. The biographer therefore sate down to his task with 
a mind full of matter. He had at first intended to give only 
a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four or five pages 
to the greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism 30 
overflowed the narrow channel. The work, which was origi- 
nally meant to consist only of a few sheets,; swelled into ten 
volumes, small volumes, it is true, and not closely printed. 
The first four appeared in 1779, the remaining six in 1781, 



38 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

46. The Lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best of 
Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertaining as any 
novel. The remarks on life and on human nature are eminently 
shrewd and profound. The criticisms are often excellent, and, 
5 even when grossly and provokingly unjust, well deserve to be 
studied. For, however erroneous they may be, they are never 
silly. They are the judgments of a mind trammelled by pre- 
judice and deficient in sensibility, but vigorous and acute. 
They therefore generally contain a portion of valuable truth 

10 which deserves to be separated from the alloy ; and, at the 
very worst, they mean something, a praise to which much of 
what is called criticism in our time has no pretensions. 

^""^ 47. Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had 
appeared in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will 

15 turn to the other lives will be struck by the difference of 
style. Since Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances 
he had written little and had talked much. When, therefore, 
he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the mannerism 
which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit 

20 of elaborate composition was less perceptible than formerly ; 
and his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had 
formerly wanted. The improvement may be discerned by a 
skilful critic in the Journey to the Hebrides, and in the Lives 
of the Poets is so obvious that it cannot escape the notice of 

25 the most careless reader. 

48. Among the lives the best are perhaps those of Cowley, 
Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, beyond all doubts 
that of Gray. 

49. This great work at once became popular. There was, 
30 indeed, much just and much unjust censure : but even those 

who were loudest in blame were attracted by the book in 
spite of themselves. Malone computed the gains of the pub- 
lishers at five or six thousand pounds. But the writer was 
very poorly remunerated. Intending at first to write very 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 39 

short prefaces, he had stipulated for only two hundred guineas. 
The booksellers, when they saw how far his performance had 
surpassed his promise, added only another hundred. Indeed, 
Johnson, though he did not despise, or affect to despise, money, 
and though his strong sense and long experience ought to 5 
have qualified him to protect his own interests, seems to have 
been singularly unskilful and unlucky in his literary bargains. 
He was generally reputed the first English writer of his time. 
Yet several writers of his time sold their copyrights for sums 
such as he never ventured to ask. To give a single instance, 10 
Robertson received four thousand five hundred pounds for 
the History of Charles V. ; and it is no disrespect to the 
memory of Robertson to say that the History of Charles V. 
is both a less valuable and a less amusing book than the Lives 
of the Poets. ^""^ 

50. Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The 
infirmities of age were coming fast upon him. That inevitable 
event of which he never thought without horror was brought 
near to him ; and his whole life was darkened by the shadow 
of death. He had often to pay the cruel price of longevity. 20 
Every year he lost what could never be replaced. The strange 
dependents to whom he had given shelter, and to whom, 
in spite of their faults, he was strongly attached by habit, 
dropped off one by one ; and, in the silence of his home, he 
regretted even the noise of their scolding matches. The kind 25 
and generous Thrale was no more ; and it would have been 
well if his wife had been laid beside him. But she survived 
to be the laughing-stock of those who had envied her, and 
to draw from the eyes of the old man who had loved her 
beyond anything in the world tears far more bitter than he 30 
would have shed over her grave. With some estimable and 
many agreeable quahties, she was not made to be independ- 
ent. The control of a mind more steadfast than her own 
was necessary to her respectability. While she was restrained 



> - 



40 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

by her husband, a man of sense and firmness/, indulgent to 
her taste in trifles^ but always the undisputed inaster of his 
house, lier worst offences had been impertinent jokes, white 
lies, and short fits of pettishness ending in sunny good humour. 
5 But he was gone ; and she was left an opulent widow of forty, 
with strong sensibihty, volatile fancy, and slender judgment. 
She soon fell in love with a music-master from Brescia, in 
whom nobody but herself could discover anything to admire. 
Her pride, and perhaps some better feelings,; struggled hard 

lo against this degrading passion. But the struggle irritated her 
nerves, soured her temper, and at length endangered her 
health. Conscious that her choice was one which Johnson 
could not approve, she became desirous to escape from his 
inspection. Her manner towards him changed. She was 

15 sometimes cold and sometimes petulant. She did not con- 
ceal her joy when he left Streatham ; she never pressed him 
to return ; and, if he came unbidden, she received him in a 
manner which convinced him he was no longer a welcome 
guest. He took the very intelligible hints which she gave. 

20 He read, for the last time, a chapter of the Greek Testament in 
the library which had been formed by himself. In a solemn 
and tender prayer he commended the house and its inmates 
to the Divine protection, and, with emotions which choked 
his voice and convulsed his powerful frame, left for ever that 

25 beloved home for the gloomy and desolate house behind Fleet 
Street, where the few and evil days which still remained to 
him were to run out. Here, in June 1783, he had a para- 
lytic stroke, from which, however, he recovered, and which 
does not appear to have at all impaired his intellectual facul- 

30 ties. But other maladies came thick upon him. His asthma 
tormented him day and night. Dropsical symptoms made 
their appearance. While sinking under a complication of 
diseases, he heard that the woman whose friendship had been 
the chief happiness of sixteen years of his life had married an 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 41 

Italian fiddler ; that all London was crying shame upon her ; 
and that the newspapers and magazines were filled with 
allusions to the Ephesian matron, and the two pictures in 
Hamlet. He vehemently said that he would try to forget her 
existence. He never uttered her name. Every memorial 5 
of her which met his eye he flung into the fire. She mean- 
while fled from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen 
and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown, has- 
tened across Mount Cenis, and learned, while passing a merry ^ 
Christmas of concerts and lemonade parties at Milan, that 10 
the great man with whose name hers is inseparably associated 
had ceased to exist. 

51. He had, in spite of much mental and much bodily 
affliction, clung vehemently to life. The feeling described 
in that fine but gloomy paper which closes the series of his 15 
Idlers seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew 
near. He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath 
more easily in a southern climate, and would probably have 
set out for Rome and Naples, but for his fear of the expense 
of the journey. That expense, indeed, he had the means of 20 
defraying ; for he had laid up about two thousand pounds, 
the fruit of labours which had made the fortune of several 
publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon this hoard, 
and he seems to have wished even to keep its existence a 
secret. Some of his friends hoped that the government might 25 
be induced to increase his pension to six hundred pounds a 
year, but this hope was disappointed, and he resolved to stand 
one English winter more. That winter was his last. His 
legs grew weaker ; his breath grew shorter ; the fatal water 
gathered fast, in spite of incisions which he, courageous against 30 
pain, but timid against death, urged his surgeons to make 
deeper and deeper. Though the tender care which had miti- 
gated his sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham 
was withdrawn, he was not left desolate. The ablest physicians 



42 LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 

and surgeons attended him, and refused to accept fees from 
him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion. Windham 
sate much in the sick-room, arranged the pillows, and sent his 
own servant to watch at night by the bed. Frances Burney, 
5 whom the old man had cherished with fatherly kindness, stood 
weeping at the door ; while Langton, whose piety eminently 
qualified him to be an adviser and comforter at such a time, 
received the last pressure of his friend's hand within. When 
at length the moment, dreaded through so many years, came 

lo close, the dark cloud passed away from Johnson's mind. His 
temper became unusually patient and gentle ; he ceased to 
think with terror of death, and of that which lies beyond 
death ; and he spoke much of the mercy of God, and of the 
propitiation of Christ. In this serene frame of mind he died 

15 on the 13th of December 1784. He was laid, a week later, 
in Westminster Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he 
. had been the historian, — Cowley and Denham, Dryden and 
Congreve, Gay, Prior, and Addison. 

52. Since his death the popularity of his works — the Lives 

20 of the Poets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human Wishes, 
excepted — has greatly diminished. His Dictionary has been 
altered by editors till it can scarcely be called his. An allu- 
sion to his Rambler or his Idler is not readily apprehended in 
literary circles. The fame even of Rasselas has grown some- 

25 what dim. But, though the celebrity of the writings may have 
declined, the celebrity of the writer, strange to say, is as great 
as ever. Boswell's book has done for him more than the best 
of his own books could do. The memory of other authors is 
kept alive by their works. But the memory of Johnson keeps 

30 many of his works alive. The old philosopher is still among 
us in the brown coat with the metal buttons and the shirt which 
ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drum- 
ming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swal- 
lowing his tea in oceans. No human being who has been more 



LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON 43 

than seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. And 
it is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance with what 
he would himself have called the anfractuosities of his intellect 
and of his temper serves only to strengthen our conviction that 
he was both a great and a good man. S 



FROM MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON CROKER'S 

EDITION OF BOSWELL'S LIFE 

OF JOHNSON 

(^Edhtbui'gh Review, Septe)>iber, ^Sji^ 



1. The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great 
work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, 
Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, 
Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than 
Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has 5 
distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth 
while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere. 

2. We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the 
human intellect so strange a phaenomenon as this book. Many 
of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography. 10 
Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has 
beaten them all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his 
own account or to the united testimony of all who knew him, a 
man of the meanest and feeblest intellect. Johnson described 
him as a fellow who had missed his only chance of immor- 15 
tality by not having been alive when the Dunciad was written. 
Beauclerk used his name as a proverbial expression for a bore. 
He was the laughing-stock of the whole of that brilHant society 
which has owed to him the greater part of its fame. He was 
always laying himself at the feet of some eminent man, and 20 
begging to be spit upon and trampled upon. He was always 
earning some ridiculous nickname, and then " binding it as a 

■ : ; 45 



46 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

crown unto him, " not merely in metaphor, but Hterally. He 
exhibited himself, at the Shakspeare Jubilee, to all the crowd 
which filled Stratford -on- Avon, ^\ath a placard round his hat 
bearing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In his Tour he 

5 proclaimed to all the world that at Edinburgh he was known 
by the appellation of PaoH Boswell. Servile and impertinent, 
shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family 
pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born 
gentleman, yet stooping to be a tale-bearer, an eavesdropper, 

10 a common butt in the taverns of London, so curious to know 
every body who was talked about, that, Tory and high Church- 
man as he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for an intro- 
duction to Tom Paine, so vain of the most childish distinctions, 
that when he had been to court, he drove to the office where 

15 his book was printing without changing his clothes, and sum- 
moned all the printer's devils to admire his new ruffles and 
sword ; such was this man, and such he was content and proud 
to be. Every thing which another man would have hidden, 
every thing the publication of which would have made another 

20 man hang himself, was matter of gay and clamorous exultation 
to his weak and diseased mind. What silly things he said, 
what bitter retorts he provoked, how at one place he was 
troubled with evil presentiments which came to nothing, how 
at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the 

25 prayerbook and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him, 
how he went to see men hanged and came away maudlin, how 
he added five hundred pounds to the fortune of one of his babies 
because she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he was 
frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors quieted 

30 him as they would have quieted a child, how tipsy he was at 
Lady Cork's one evening and how much his merriment annoyed 
the ladies, how impertinent he was to the Duchess of Argyle 
and with what stately contempt she put down his impertinence, 
how Colonel Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 47 

obtrusiveness, how his father and the very wife of his bosom 
laughed and fretted at his fooleries ; all these things he pro- 
claimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects for pride 
and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices of his temper, all 
the illusions of his vanity, all his hypochondriac whimsies, all 5 
his castles in the air, he displayed with a cool self-complacency, 
a perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool of him- 
self, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in the whole his- 
tory of mankind. He has used many people ill ; but assuredly 
he has used nobody so ill as himself. 10 

3. That such a man should have written one of the best 
books in the world is strange enough. But this is not all. 
Many persons who have conducted themselves foolishly in 
active life, and whose conversation has indicated no superior 
powers of mind, have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was 15 
very justly described by one of his contemporaries as an 
inspired idiot, and by another as a being 

" Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." 

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His blunders 
would not come in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But 20 
these men attained literary eminence in spite of their weak- 
nesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If 
he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a 
great writer. Without all the qualities which made him the 
jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without 25 
the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad- 
eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have 
produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his 
servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and 
garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled 30 
to repay the most liberal hospitality by the basest violation of 
confidence, a man without delicacy, without shame, without 
sense enough to know when he was hurting the feelings of 



48 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

others or when he was exposing himself to derision ; and 
because he was all this, he has, in an important department 
of Hterature, immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, 
Clarendon, Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson. 

5 4. Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence 
as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all 
his books a single remark of his own on Hterature, politics, 
religion, or society, which is not either commonplace or absurd. 
His dissertations on hereditary gentiUty, on the slave-trade, 

10 and on the entailing of landed estates, may serve as examples. 
To say that these passages are sophistical would be to pay 
them an extravagant compUment. They have no pretence to 
argument, or even to meaning. He has reported innumerable 
observations made by himself in the course of conversation. 

15 Of those observations we do not remember one which is above 
the intellectual capacity of a boy of fifteen. He has printed 
many of his own letters, and in these letters he is always rant- 
ing or twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things 
which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were 

20 utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation 
and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a 
man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have suf- 
ficed to make him conspicuous ; but, because he was a dunce, 
a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal. 

25 5. Those parts of his book which, considered abstractedly, 
are most utterly worthless, are delightful when we read them 
as illustrations of the character of the writer. Bad in them- 
selves, they are good dramatically, like the nonsense of Justice 
Shallow, the clipped English of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced 

30 consonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell is the most 
candid. Other men who have pretended to lay open their 
own hearts, Rousseau, for example, and Lord Byron, have 
evidently written with a constant view to effect, and are to be 
then most distrusted when they seem to be most sincere. 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 49 

There is scarcely any man who would not rather accuse him- 
self of great crimes and of dark and tempestuous passions, 
than proclaim all his little vanities and wild fancies. It would 
be easier to find a person who would avow actions hke those 
of Caesar Borgia or Danton, than one who would publish a 5 
daydream Hke those of Alnaschar and Malvolio. Those weak- 
nesses which most men keep covered up in the most secret 
places of the mind, not to be disclosed to the eye of friend- 
ship or of love, were precisely the weaknesses which Boswell 
paraded before all the world. He was perfectly frank, because 10 
the weakness of his understanding and the tumult of his spirits 
prevented him from knowing when he made himself ridiculous. 
His book resembles nothing so much as the conversation of 
the inmates of the Palace of Truth. 

6. His fame is great; and it will, we have no doubt, be 15 
lasting ; but it is fame of a peculiar kind, and indeed marvel- 
lously resembles infamy. We remember no other case in 
which the world has made so great a distinction between a 
book and its author. In general, the book and the author 
are considered as one. To admire the book is to admire the 20 
author. The case of Boswell is an exception, we think the 
only exception, to this rule. His work is universally allowed 
to be interesting, instructive, eminently original : yet it has 
brought him nothing but contempt. All the world reads it : 
all the world delights in it : yet we do not remember ever to 25 
have read or ever to have heard any expression of respect and 
admiration for the man to whom we owe so much instruction 
and amusement. While edition after edition of his book was 
coming forth, his son, as Mr. Croker tells us, was ashamed of 
it, and hated to hear it mentioned. This feeling was natural 3° 
and reasonable. Sir Alexander saw that, in proportion to the 
celebrity of the work, was the degradation of the author. The 
very editors of this unfortunate gentleman's books have for- 
gotten their allegiance, and, like those Puritan casuists who 



50 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

took arms by the authority of the king against his person, 
have attacked the writer while doing homage to the writings. 
Mr. Croker, for example, has published two thousand five 
hundred notes on the hfe of Johnson, and yet scarcely ever 
5 mentions the biographer whose performance he has taken such 
pains to illustrate without some expression of contempt. 

7. An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not. Yet the 
malignity of the most maligant satirist could scarcely cut 
deeper than his thoughtless loquacity. Having himself no 

10 sensibiHty to derision and contempt, he took it for granted 
that all others were equally callous. He was not ashamed to 
exhibit himself to the whole world as a common spy, a com- 
mon tattler, a humble companion without the excuse of pov- 
erty, and to tell a hundred stories of his own pertness and 

15 folly, and of the insults which his pertness and folly brought 
upon him. It was natural that he should show little discre- 
tion in cases in which the feelings or the honour of others 
might be concerned. No man, surely, ever published such 
stories respecting persons whom he professed to love and 

20 revere. He would infallibly have made his hero as con- 
temptible as he has made himself, had not his hero really 
possessed some moral and intellectual qualities of a very high 
order. The best proof that Johnson was really an extraordi- 
nary man is that his character, instead of being degraded, has, 

25 on the whole, been decidedly raised by a work in which all 
his vices and weaknesses are exposed more unsparingly than 
they ever were exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick. 

8. Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his fame 
and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, is better known 

30 to us than any other man in history. Every thing about him, 
his coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus's 
dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs 
which too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his 
insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with plums, his 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 51 

inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts 
as he walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring up scraps of 
orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight disputations, 
his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puffings, 
his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic wit, his 5 
vehemence, his insolence, his fits of tempestuous rage, his 
queer inmates, old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat 
Hodge and the negro Frank, all are as familiar to us as the 
objects by which we have been surrounded from childhood. 
But we have no minute information respecting those years of 10 
Johnson's Hfe during which his character and his manners 
became immutably fixed. We know him, not as he was known 
to the men of his own generation, but as he was known to men 
whose father he might have been. That celebrated club of 
which he was the most distinguished member contained few 15 
persons who could remember a time when his fame was not 
fully established and his habits completely formed. He had 
made himself a name in literature w^hile Reynolds and the 
Wartons were still boys. He was about twenty years older 
than Burke, Goldsmith, and Gerard Hamilton, about thirty 20 
years older than Gibbon, Beauclerk, and Langton, and about 
forty years older than Lord Stowell, Sir William Jones, and 
Windham. Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, the two writers from 
whom we derive most of our knowledge respecting him, never 
saw him till long after he was fifty years old, till most of his 25 
great works had become classical, and till the pension bestowed 
on him by the Crown had placed him above poverty. Of those 
eminent men who were his most intimate associates towards the 
close of his life, the only onip, as far as we remember, who knew 
him during the first ten or twelve years of his residence in the 3° 
capital, was David Garrick ; and it does not appear that, during 
those years, David Garrick saw much of his fellow-townsman. 

9. Johnson came up to London precisely at the time when 
the condition of a man of letters was most miserable and 



52 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

degraded. It was a dark night between two sunny days. The 
age of patronage had passed away. The age of general curi- 
osity and intelhgence had not arrived. The number of readers 
is at present so great that a popular author may subsist in 
5 comfort and opulence on the profits of his works. In the 
reigns of William the Third, of Anne, and of George the First, 
even such men as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have 
been able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their 
writings. But the deficiency of the natural demand for litera- 
10 ture was, at the close of the seventeenth and at the beginning 
of the eighteenth century, more than made up by artificial 
encouragement, by a vast system of bounties and premiums. 
There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of 
literary merit were so splendid, at which men who could write 
15 well found such easy admittance into the most distinguished 
society, and to the highest honours of the state. The chiefs 
of both the great parties into which the kingdom was divided 
patronised literature with emulous munificence. Congreve, 
when he had scarcely attained his majority, was rewarded for 
20 his first comedy with places which made him independent for 
life. Smith, though his Hippolytus and Phaedra failed, would 
have been consoled with three hundred a year but for his own 
folly. Rowe was not only Poet Laureate, but also land-surveyor 
of the customs in the port of London, clerk of the council to 
25 the Prince of Wales, and secretary of the Presentations to the 
Lord Chancellor. Hughes was secretary to the Commissions 
of the Peace. Ambrose Philips was judge of the Prerogative 
Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of Appeals and 
of the Board of Trade. Newton was Master of the Mint. 
30 Stepney and Prior were employed in embassies of high dignity 
and importance. Gay, who commenced life as an apprentice 
to a silk mercer, became a secretary of legation at five-and- 
twenty. It was to a poem on the Death of Charles the Second, 
and to the City and Country Mouse, that Montague owed 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 53 

his introduction into public life, his earldom, his garter,, and 
his Auditorship of the Exchequer. Swift, but for the uncon- 
querable prejudice of the queen, would have been a bishop. 
Oxford, with his white staff in his hand, passed through the 
crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when that ingenious 5 
writer deserted the Whigs. Steele was a commissioner of 
stamps and a member of Parliament. Arthur Mainwaring was 
a commissioner of the customs, and auditor of the imprest. 
Tickell was secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. Addison 
was secretary 01 state. 

10. This liberal patronage was brought into fashion, as it 
seems, by the magnificent Dorset, almost the only noble versi- 
fier in the court of Charles the Second who possessed talents 
for composition which were independent of the aid of a coronet. 
Montague owed his elevation to the favour of Dorset, and 15 
imitated through the whole course of his life the liberaHty to 
which he was himself so greatly indebted. The Tory leaders, 
Harley and Bolingbroke in particular, vied with the chiefs of 
the Whig party in zeal for the encouragement of letters. But 
soon after the accession of the House of Hanover a change 20 
took place. The supreme power passed to a man who cared 
little for poetry or eloquence. The importance of the House 
of Commons was constantly on the increase. The government 
was under the necessity of bartering for Parliamentary support 
much of that patronage which had been employed in fostering 25 
literary merit ; and Walpole was by no means inclined to 
divert any part of the fund of corruption to purposes which he 
considered as idle. He had eminent talents for government 
and for debate. But he had paid Httle attention to books, 
and felt little respect for authors. One of the coarse jokes of 30 
his friend. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, was far more pleas- 
ing to him than Thomson's Seasons or Richardson's Pamela. 
He had observed that some of the distinguished writers 
whom the favour of Halifax had turned into statesmen had 



54 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSOxM 

been mere encumbrances to their party, dawdlers in office 
and mutes in Parliament. During the whole course of hk 
administration, therefore, he scarcely befrie'nded a single man 
of genius. The best writers of the age gave all their support 
5 to the opposition, and contributed to excite that discontent 
which, after plunging the nation into a foolish and unjust war, 
overthrew the minister to make room for men less able and 
equally immoral. The opposition could reward its eulogists 
with little more than promises and caresses. St. James's would 

lo give nothing : Leicester House had nothing to give. 

1 1 . Thus, at the time when Johnson commenced his liter- 
ary career, a writer had httle to hope from the patronage of 
powerful individuals. The patronage of the public did not 
yet furnish the means of comfortable subsistence. The prices 

15 paid by booksellers to authors were so low that a man of con- 
siderable talents and unremitting industry could do little more 
than provide for the day which was passin^ over him. The 
lean kine had eaten up the fat kine. The 'tmn and 'withered 
ears had devoured the good ears. The season of rich harvests 

20 was over, and the period of famine had begun. All that is 
squalid and miserable might now be summed up in the word 
Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow, 
familiar with compters and spunging-houses, and perfectly 
qualified to decide on the comparative merits of the Com- 

25 mon Side in the King's Bench prison and qf Mount Scoundrel 
in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him ; and they well 
might pity him. P'or if their condition was equally iV _]ect, 
their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense of 
insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair of 

30 stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out of place, to trans- 
late ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted 
by baihffs from one haunt of beggary and pestilence tu another, 
from Grub Street to St. George's Fields, and from St. George's 
Fields to the alleys behind St. Martin's church, to sleep on a 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 55 

bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in Decem- 
ber, to die in a hospital and to be buried in a parish vault, 
was the fate of more than one writer who, if he had lived 
thirty years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings . 
of the Kitcat or the Scriblerus club, would have sat in Parlia- 5 
ment, and would have been intrusted with embassies to the 
High Allies ; who, if he had lived in our time, would have 
found encouragement scarcely less munificent in Albemarle 
Street or in Paternoster Row. 

12. As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk 10 
of life has its peculiar temptations. The literary character, 
assuredly, has always had its share of faults, vanity, jealousy, 
morbid sensibility. To these faults were now superadded the 
faults which are commonly found in men whose livelihood is 
precarious, and whose principles are exposed to the trial of 15 
severe distress. All the vices of the gambler and of the beg- 
gar were blended with those of the author. The prizes in the 
wretchec' ^otteiy v. t" book-making were scarcely less ruinous than 
th3 blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a manner 
that it was almost certain to be abused. After months of 20 
starvation and despair, a full third night or a well-received 
dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed 
poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with 
the images of which his mind had been haunted while he 
was sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at the 25 
Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon quali- 
fied ' "11 for another year of night-cellars. Such was the life 
of Savage, of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes 
blazing ni gold-laced hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in 
bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper 30 
cravats because their linen was in pawn ; sometimes drink- 
ing Champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless ; sometimes 
standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge island, 
to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste ; 



56 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

they knew luxury ; they knew beggary ; but they never knew 
comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a 
regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old 
gipsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for 
5 the restraints and securities of civilised communities. They 
were as untameable, as much wedded to their desolate free- 
dom, as the wild ass. They could no more be broken in to 
the offices of social man than the unicorn could be trained to 
serve and abide by the crib. It was well if they did not, like 

lo beasts of a still fiercer race, tear the hands which ministered 
to their necessities. To assist them was impossible ; and the 
most benevolent of mankind at length became weary of giving 
relief which was dissipated with the wildest profusion as soon 
as it had been received. If a sum was bestowed on the 

15 wretched adventurer, such as, properly husbanded, might 
have supplied him for six months, it was instantly spent in 
strange freaks of sensuality, and before forty-eight hours had 
elapsed, the poet was again pestering all his acquaintance for 
twopence to get a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous 

20 cook-shop. If his friends gave him an asylum in their houses, 
those houses were forthwith turned into bagnios and taverns. 
All order was destroyed ; all business was suspended. The 
most good-natured host began to repent of his eagerness to 
serve a man of genius in distress when he heard his guest 

25 roaring for fresh punch at five o'clock in the morning. 

13. A few eminent writers were more fortunate. Pope had 
been raised above poverty by the active patronage which, in 
his youth, both the great political parties had extended to his 
Homer. Young had received the only pension ever bestowed, 

30 to the best of our recollection, by Sir Robert Walpole, as the 
reward of mere literary merit. One or two of the many poets 
who attached themselves to the opposition, Thomson in par- 
ticular and Mallet, obtained, after much severe suffering, the 
means of subsistence from their political friends, Richardson, 



ESSAY ON BOSVvELL'S JOHNSON 57 

like a man of sense, kept his shop ; and his shop kept him, 
which his novels, admirable as they are, would scarcely have 
done. But nothing could be more deplorable than the state 
even of the ablest men, who at that time depended for sub- 
sistence on their writings. Johnson, Collins, Fielding, and 5 
Thomson, were certainly four of the most distinguished per- 
sons that England produced during the eighteenth century. 
It is well known that they were all four arrested for debt. 

14. Into calamities and difficulties such as these Johnson 
plunged in his twenty-eighth year. From that time till he was 10 
three or four and fifty, we have little information respecting 
him ; little, we mean, compared with the full and accurate 
information which we possess respecting his proceedings and 
habits towards the close of his life. He emerged at length 
from cock-lofts and sixpenny ordinaries into the society of the 15 
polished and the opulent. His fame was estabhshed. A pen- 
sion sufficient for his wants had been conferred on him : and 
he came forth to astonish a generation with which he had 
almost as Httle in common as with Frenchmen or Spaniards. 

15. In his early years he had occasionally seen the great; 20 
but he had seen them as a beggar. He now came among 
them as a companion. The demand for amusement and 
instruction had, during the course of twenty years, been grad- 
ually increasing. The price of literary labour had risen ; and 
those rising men of letters with whom Johnson was henceforth 25 
to associate were for the most part persons widely different 
from those who had walked about with him all night in the 
streets for want of a lodging. Burke, Robertson, the Wartons, 
Gray, Mason, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Btattie, Sir William 
Jones, Goldsmith, and Churchill, were the most distinguished 30 
writers of what may be called the second generation of the 
Johnsonian age. Of these men Churchill was the only one 

in whom we can trace the stronger lineaments of that charac- 
ter which, when Johnson first came up to London, was common 



58 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

among authors. Of the rest, scarcely any had felt the pres- 
sure of severe poverty. Almost all had been early admitted 
into the most respectable society on an equal footing. They 
were men of quite a different species from the dependents of 

5'Curll and Osborne. 

1 6. Johnson came among them the solitary specimen of 
a past age, the last survivor of the genuine race of Grub 
Street hacks ; the last of that generation of authors whose 
abject misery and whose dissolute manners had furnished 

10 inexhaustible matter to the satirical genius of Pope. From 
nature he had received an uncouth figure, a diseased con- 
stitution, and an irritable temper. The manner in which the 
earlier years of his manhood had been passed had given to 
his demeanour, and even to his moral character, some pecul- 

15 iarities appalling to the civilised beings who were the com- 
panions of his old age. The perverse irregularity of his hours, 
the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, 
interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his strange absti- 
nence, and his equally strange voracity, his active benevo- 

20 lence, contrasted with the constant rudeness and the occasional 
ferocity of his manners in society, made him, in the opinion 
of those with whom he lived during the last twenty years of 
his Hfe, a complete original. An original he was, undoubt- 
edly, in some respects. But if we possessed full information 

25 concerning those who shared his early hardships, we should 
probably find that what we call his singularities of manner 
were, for the most part, failings which he had in common 
with the class to which he belonged. He ate at Streat- 
ham Park as he had been used to eat behind the screen at 

30 St. John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show his ragged 
clothes. He ate as it was natural that a man should eat, who, 
during a great part of his life, had passed the morning in 
doubt whether he should have food for the afternoon. The 
habits of his early life had accustomed him to bear privation 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 59 

with fortitude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation. 
He could fast ; but, when he did not fast, he tore his dinner 
Hke a famished wolf, with the veins swelling on his fore- 
head, and the perspiration running down his cheeks. He 
scarcely ever took wine. But when he drank it, he drank it 5 
greedily and in large tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated 
symptoms of that same moral disease which raged with such 
deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse. The 
roughness and violence which he showed in society were to 
be expected from a man whose temper, not naturally gentle, 10 
had been long tried by the bitterest calamities, by the want 
of meat, of fire, and of clothes, by the importunity of credi- 
tors, by the insolence of booksellers, by the derision of fools, 
by the insincerity of patrons, by that bread which is the 
bitterest of all food, by those stairs which are the most toil- 15 
some of all paths, by that deferred hope which makes the 
heart sick. Through all these things the ill-dressed, coarse, 
ungainly pedant had struggled manfully up to eminence and 
command. It was natural that, in the exercise of his power, 
he should be " eo immitior, quia toleraverat," that, though his 20 
heart was undoubtedly generous and humane, his demeanour 
in society should be harsh and despotic. For severe distress 
he had sympathy, and not only sympathy, but munificent 
relief. But for the suffering which a harsh world inflicts 
upon a delicate mind he had no pity; for it was a kind of 25 
suffering which he could scarcely conceive. He would carry 
home on his shoulders a sick and starving girl from the 
streets. He turned his house into a place of refuge for a 
crowd of wretched old creatures who could find no other 
asylum ; nor could all their peevishness and ingratitude w.eary 30 
out his benevolence. But the pangs of wounded vanity 
seemed to him ridiculous ; and he scarcely felt sufficient 
compassion even for the pangs of wounded affection. He 
had seen and felt so much of sharp misery, that he was not 



6o ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

affected by paltry vexations ; and he seemed to think that 
every body ought to be as much hardened to those vexations 
as himself. He was angry with Boswell for complaining of 
a headache, with Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about the dust 
5 on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. These were, in 
his phrase, " foppish lamentations," which people ought to 
be ashamed to utter in a world so full of sin and sorrow. 
Goldsmith crying because the Good-natured Man had failed, 
inspired him with no pity. Though his own health was not 

lo good, he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuniary 
losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely to beggary, 
moved him very little. People whose hearts had been soft- 
ened by prosperity might weep, he said, for such events ; but 
all that could be expected of a plain man was not to laugh. 

15 He was not much moved even by the spectacle of Lady 
Tavistock dying of a broken heart for the loss of her lord. 
Such grief he considered as a luxury reserved for the idle and 
the wealthy. A washerwoman, left a widow with nine small 
children, would not have sobbed herself to death. 

20 17. A person who troubled himself so little about small 
or sentimental grievances was not likely to be very attentive 
to the feelings of others in the ordinary intercourse of society. 
He could not understand how a sarcasm or a reprimand 
could make any man really unhappy. "My dear doctor," 

25 said he to Goldsmith, " what harm does it do to a man to call 
him Holofernes ? " " Pooh, ma'am," he exclaimed to Mrs. 
Carter, " who is the worse for being talked of uncharitably ? " 
Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small 
things. Johnson was impolite, not because he wanted benev- 

30 olence, but because small things appeared smaller to him than 
to people who had never known what it was to live for four- 
pence halfpenny a day. 

18. The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was the 
union of great powers with low prejudices. If we judged of 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 6l 

him by the best parts of his mind, we should place him almost 
as high as he was placed by the idolatry of Boswell ; if by 
the worst parts of his mind, we should place him even below 
Boswell himself. Where he was not under the influence of 
some strange scruple, or some domineering passion, which 5 
prevented him from boldly and fairly investigating a subject, 
he was a wary and acute reasoner, a httle too much inclined 
to scepticism, and a little too fond of paradox. No man was 
less likely to be imposed upon by fallacies in argument or by 
exaggerated statements of fact. But if, while he was beating lo 
down sophisms and exposing false testimony, some childish 
prejudices, such as would excite laughter in a well-managed 
nursery, came across him, he was smitten as if by enchant- 
ment. His mind dwindled away under the spell from gigantic 
elevation to dwarfish littleness. Those who had lately been 15 
admiring its amplitude and its force were now as much aston- 
ished at its strange narrowness and feebleness as the fisherman 
in the Arabian tale, when he saw the Genie, whose stature 
had overshadowed the whole sea-coast, and whose might 
seemed equal to a contest with armies, contract himself to 20 
the dimensions of his small prison, and lie there the helpless 
slave of the charm of Solomon. 

19. Johnson was in the habit of sifting with extreme severity 
the evidence for all stories which were merely odd. But when 
they were not only odd but miraculous, his severity relaxed. 25 
He began to be credulous precisely at the point where the 
most credulous people begin to be sceptical. It is curious to 
observe, both in his writings and in his conversation, the con- 
trast between the disdainful manner in which he rejects unau- 
thenticated anecdotes, even when they are consistent with the 30 
general laws of nature, and the respectful manner in which he 
mentions the wildest stories relating to the invisible world. 
A man who told him of a waterspout or a meteoric stone 
generally had the lie direct given him for his pains. A man 



62 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

who told him of a prediction or a dream wonderfully accom- 
plished was sure of a courteous hearing. " Johnson," observed 
Hogarth, " like king David, says in his haste that all men are 
liars." " His incredulity," says Mrs.Thrale, "amounted almost 
5 to disease." She tells us how he browbeat a gentleman, who 
gave him an account of a hurricane in the West Indies, and a 
poor quaker who related some strange circumstance about the 
red-hot balls fired at the siege of Gibraltar. " It is not so. 
It cannot be true. Don't tell that story again. You cannot 

10 think how poor a figure you make in telling it." He once said, 
half jestingly we suppose, that for six months he refused to 
credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, and that he still 
believed the extent of the calamity to be greatly exaggerated. 
Yet he related with a grave face how old Mr. Cave of St. John's 

1 5 Gate saw a ghost, and how this ghost was something of a shadowy 
being. He went himself on a ghost hunt to Cock Lane, and 
was angry with John Wesley for not following up another scent 
of the same kind with proper spirit and perseverance. He 
rejects the Celtic genealogies and poems without the least hesi- 

20 tation ; yet he declares himself willing to believe the stories of 
the second sight. If he had examined the claims of the High- 
land seers with half the severity with which he sifted the evi- 
dence for the genuineness of Fingal, he would, we suspect, have 
come away from Scotland with a mind fully made up. In his 

25 Lives of the Poets, we find that he is unwilling to give credit 
to the accounts of Lord Roscommon's early proficiency in his 
studies ; but he tells with great solemnity an absurd romance 
about some intelHgence preternaturally impressed on the mind 
of that nobleman. He avows himself to be in great doubt 

30 about the truth of the story, and ends by warning his readers 
not wholly to slight such impressions. 

20. Many of his sentiments on religious subjects are worthy 
of a liberal and enlarged mind. He could discern clearly 
enough the folly and meanness of all bigotry except his own. 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON .63 

When he spoke of the scruples of the Puritans, he spoke Hke 
a person who had really obtained an insight into the divine 
philosophy of the New Testament, and who considered Chris- 
tianity as a noble scheme of government, tending to promote 
the happiness and to elevate the moral nature of man. The 5 
horror which the sectaries felt for cards, Christmas ale, plum- 
porridge, mince-pies, and dancing-bears, excited his contempt. 
To the arguments urged by some very worthy people against 
showy dress he repHed with admirable sense and spirit, " Let 
us not be found, when our Master calls us, stripping the lace 10 
off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls 
and tongues. Alas ! sir, the man who cannot get to heaven in 
a green coat will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey 
one." Yet he was himself under the tyranny of scruples as 
unreasonable as those of Hudibras or Ralpho, and carried his 15 
zeal for ceremonies and for ecclesiastical dignities to lengths 
altogether inconsistent with reason or with Christian charity. 
He has gravely noted down in his diary that he once committed 
the sin of drinking coffee on Good Friday. In Scotland, he 
thought it his duty to pass several months without joining in 20 
public worship, solely because the ministers of the kirk had not 
been ordained by bishops. His mode of estimating the piety 
of his neighbours was somewhat singular. " Campbell," said 
he, " is a gbod man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not 
been in the inside of a church for many years; but he never 25 
passes a church without pulling off his hat : this shows he has 
good principles." Spain and Sicily must surely contain many 
pious robbers and well-principled assassins. Johnson could 
easily see that a Roundhead who named all his children after 
Solomon's singers, and talked in the House of Commons about 30 
seeking the Lord, might be an unprincipled villain whose reli- 
gious mummeries only aggravated his guilt. But a man who 
took off his hat when he passed a church episcopally consecrated 
must be a good man, a pious man, a man of good principles. 



64 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

Johnson could easily see that those persons who looked on 
a dance or a laced waistcoat as sinful, deemed most ignobly 
of the attributes of God and of the ends of revelation. But 
with what a storm of invective he would have overwhelmed 
5 any man who had blamed him for celebrating the redemption 
of mankind with sugarless tea and butterless buns. 

2 1. Nobody spoke more contemptuously of the cant of 
patriotism. Nobody saw more clearly the error of those who 
regarded liberty, not as a means, but as an end, and who 

lo proposed to themselves, as the object of their pursuit, the pros- 
perity of the state as distinct from the prosperity of the indi- 
viduals who compose the state. His calm and settled opinion 
seems to have been that forms of government have little or no 
influence on the happiness of society. This opinion, erroneous 

15 as it is, ought at least to have preserved him from all intemper- 
ance on political questions. It did not, however, preserve him 
from the lowest, fiercest, and most absurd extravagances of 
party-spirit, from rants which, in every thing but the diction, 
resembled those of Squire Western. He was, as a politician, 

20 half ice and half fire. On the side of his intellect he was a 
mere Pococurante, far too apathetic about public affairs, far too 
sceptical as to the good or evil tendency of any form of polity. 
His passions, on the contrary, were violent even to slaying 
against all who leaned to Whiggish principles. *" The well- 

25 known lines which he inserted in Goldsmith's Traveller express 
what seems to have been his deliberate judgment : 

" How small of all that human hearts endure 
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure ! " 

He had previously put expressions very similar into the mouth 
30 of Rasselas. It is amusing to contrast these passages with the 
torrents of raving abuse which he poured forth against the 
Long Parliament and the American Congress. In one of the 
conversations reported by Boswell this inconsistency displays 
itself in the most ludicrous manner. 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 65 

22. "Sir Adam Ferguson," says Boswell, "suggested that 
luxury corrupts a people, and destroys the spirit of liberty. 
Johnson : ' Sir, that is all visionary. I would not give half 
a guinea to live under one form of government rather than 
another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual. 5 
Sir, the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a private 
man. What Frenchman is prevented passing his life as he 
pleases ? ' Sir Adam : ' But, sir, in the British constitution it 

is surely of importance to keep up a spirit in the people, so as 
to preserve a balance against the crown.' Johnson : ' Sir, I 10 
perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy of 
the power of the crown? The crown has not power enough.' " 

23. One of the old philosophers, Lord Bacon tells us, used 
to say that life and death were just the same to him. " Why, 
then," said an objector, "do you not kill yourself?" The 15 
philosopher answered, " Because it is just the same." If 
the difference between two forms of government be not 
worth half a guinea, it is not easy to see how Whiggism can 
be viler than Toryism, or how the crown can have too little 
power. If the happiness of individuals is not affected by 20 
political abuses, zeal for liberty is doubtless ridiculous. But 
zeal for monarchy must be equally so. No person would 
have been more quick-sighted than Johnson to such a con- 
tradiction as this in the logic of an antagonist. 

24. The judgments which Johnson passed on books were, 25 
in his own time, regarded with superstitious veneration, and, in 
our time, are generally treated with indiscriminate contempt. 
They are the judgments of a strong but enslaved understanding. 
The mind of the critic was hedged round by an uninterrupted 
fence of prejudices and superstitions. Within his narrow limits, 30 
he displayed a vigour and an activity which ought to have 
enabled him to clear the barrier that confined him. 

25. *^How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his prem- 
ises so ably, should assume his premises so fooHshly, is one of 



66 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

the great mysteries of human nature. The same inconsist- 
ency may be observed in the schoolmen of the middle ages. 
Those writers show so much acuteness and force of mind in 
arguing on their wretched data, that a modern reader is per- 
5 petually at a loss to comprehend how such minds came by 
such data. Not a flaw in the superstructure of the theory 
which they are rearing escapes their vigilance. Yet they are 
blind to the obvious unsoundness of the foundation. It is 
the same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal arguments 

10 are intellectual prodigies, abounding with the happiest anal- 
ogies and the most refined distinctions. The principles of 
their arbitrary science being once admitted, the statute-book 
and the reports being once assumed as the foundations of 
reasoning, these men must be allowed to be perfect masters 

15 of logic. But if a question arises as to the postulates on which 
their whole system rests, if they are called upon to vindicate the 
fundamental maxims of that system which they have passed 
their lives in studying, these very men often talk the language 
of savages or of children. Those who have listened to a man 

20 of this class in his own court, and who have witnessed the skill 
with which he analyses and digests a vast mass of evidence, or 
reconciles a crowd of precedents which at first sight seem con- 
tradictory, scarcely know him again when, a few hours later, 
they hear him speaking on the other side of Westminster 

25 Hall in his capacity of legislator. They can scarcely believe 
that the paltry quirks which are faintly heard through a storm 
of coughing, and which do not impose on the plainest country 
gentleman, can proceed from the same sharp and vigorous 
intellect which had excited their admiration under the same 

30 roof, and on the same day. 

26. Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, not 
like a legislator. He never examined foundations where a 
point was already ruled. His whole code of criticism rested 
on pure assumption, for which he sometimes quoted a precedent 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 6^] 

or an authority, but rarely troubled himself to give a reason 
drawn from the nature of things. He took it for granted that 
the kind of poetry which flourished in his own time, which he 
had been accustomed to hear praised from his childhood, and 
which he had himself written with success, was the best kind 5 
of poetry. In his biographical work he has repeatedly laid 
it down as an undeniable proposition that during the latter 
part of the seventeenth century, and the earHer part of the 
eighteenth, English poetry had been in a constant progress 
of improvement. Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope, had lo 
been, according to him, the great reformers. He judged of 
all works of the imagination by the standard established among 
his own contemporaries. Though he allowed Homer to have 
been a greater man than Virgil, he seems to have thought the 
T^neid a greater poem than the Iliad. Indeed he well might 15 
have thought so ; for he preferred Pope's Iliad to Homer's. 
He pronounced that, after Hoole's translation of Tasso, Fair- 
fax's would hardly be reprinted. He could see no merit in 
our fine old English ballads, and always spoke with the most 
provoking contempt of Percy's fondness for them. Of the 20 
great original works of imagination which appeared during 
his time, Richardson's novels alone excited his admiration. 
He could see Httle or no merit in Tom Jones, in Gulliver's 
Travels, or in Tristram Shandy. To Thomson's Castle of 
Indolence, he vouchsafed only a line of cold commendation, 25 
of commendation much colder than what he has bestowed 
on the Creation of that portentous bore. Sir Richard Black- 
more. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren rascal. Churchill 
was a blockhead. The contempt which he felt for the trash 
of Macpherson was indeed just ; but it was, we suspect, 30 
just by chance. He despised the Fingal for the very reason 
which led many men of genius to admire it. He despised it, 
not because it was essentially commonplace, but because it 
had a superficial air of originality. 



6S ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

27. He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of compositions 
fashioned on his own principles. But when a deeper philos- 
ophy was required, when he undertook to pronounce judg- 
ment on the works of those great minds which " yield homage 

5 only to eternal laws," his failure was ignominious. He criti- 
cised Pope's Epitaphs excellently. But his observations on 
Shakespeare's plays and Milton's poems seem to us for the 
most part as wretched as if they had been written by Rymer 
himself, whom we take to have been the worst critic that 
10 ever lived. 

28. Some of Johnson's whims on literary subjects can be 
compared only to that strange nervous feeling which made him 
uneasy if he had not touched every post between the Mitre 
tavern and his own lodgings. His preference of Latin epitaphs 

15 to English epitaphs is an instance. An English epitaph, he 
said, would disgrace Smollett. He declared that he would not 
pollute the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English epitaph 
on Goldsmith. What reason there can be for celebrating a 
British writer in Latin, which there was not for covering the 

20 Roman arches of triumph with Greek inscriptions, or for 
commemorating the deeds of the heroes of Thermopylae in 
Egyptian hieroglyphics, we are utterly unable to imagine. 

29. On men and manners, at least on the men and man- 
ners of a particular place and a particular age, Johnson had 

25 certainly looked with a most observant and discriminating eye. 
His remarks on the education of children, on marriage, on 
the economy of families, on the rules of society, are always 
striking, and generally sound. In his writings, indeed, the 
knowledge of life which he possessed in an eminent degree is 

30 very imperfectly exhibited. Like those unfortunate chiefs of 
the middle ages who were suffocated by their own chain-mail 
and cloth of gold, his maxims perish under that load of words 
which was designed for their defence and their ornament. 
But it is clear from the remains of his conversation, that he 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 69 

had more of that homely wisdom which nothing but experi- 
ence and observation can give than any writer since the time 
of Swift. If he had been content to write as he talked, he 
might have left books on the practical art of living superior 
to the Directions to Servants. 5 

30. Yet even his remarks on society, like his remarks on 
literature, indicate a mind at least as remarkable for narrow- 
ness as for strength. He was no master of the great science 
of human nature. He had studied, not the genus man, but 
the species Londoner. Nobody was ever so thoroughly con- 10 
versant with all the forms of life and all the shades of moral 
and intellectual character which were to be seen from Islington 
to the Thames, and from Hyde-Park corner to Mile-end green. 
But his philosophy stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the 
rural life of England he knew nothing ; and he took it for 1 5 
granted that every body who lived in the country was either 
stupid or miserable. '' Country gentlemen," said he, " must 
be unhappy ; for they have not enough to keep their lives in 
motion " ; as if all those peculiar habits and associations which 
made Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in the 20 
world to himself had been essential parts of human nature. 
Of remote countries and past times he talked with wild and 
ignorant presumption. " The Athenians of the age of Demos- 
thenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, "were a people of brutes, a 
barbarous people." In conversation with Sir Adam Ferguson 25 
he used similar language. "The boasted Athenians," he said, 
" were barbarians. The mass of every people must be barba- 
rous where there is no printing." The fact was this : he saw that 
a Londoner who could not read was a very stupid and brutal 
fellow : he saw that great refinement of taste and activity of 30 
intellect were rarely found in a Londoner who had not read 
much ; and, because it was by means of books that people 
acquired almost all their knowledge in the society with which 
he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the strongest 



70 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHxNSON 

and clearest evidence, that the human mind can be cultivated 
by means of books alone. An Athenian citizen might possess 
very few volumes ; and the largest library to which he had 
access might be much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase 

5 in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass every morning 
in conversation with Socrates, and might hear Pericles speak 
four or five times every month. He saw the plays of Soph- 
ocles and Aristophanes : he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias 
and the paintings of Zeuxis : he knew by heart the choruses 

10 of /Eschylus : he heard the rhapsodist at the corner of the 
street reciting the Shield of x\chilles or the Death of Argus : 
he was a legislator, conversant with high questions of alHance, 
revenue, and war : he wsls a soldier, trained under a liberal 
and generous discipline : he was a judge, compelled every day 

15 to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. These things were 
in themselves an education, an education eminently fitted, not, 
indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, but to give quick- 
ness to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the 
expression, and politeness to the manners. All this was over- 

20 looked. An Athenian who did not improve his mind by read- 
ing was, in Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a 
Cockney who made his mark, much such a person as black 
Frank before he went to school, and far inferior to a parish 
clerk or a printer's devil. 

25 31. Johnson's friends have allowed that he carried to a 
ridiculous extreme his unjust contempt for foreigners. He 
pronounced the French to be a very silly people, much behind 
us, stupid, ignorant creatures. And this judgment he formed 
after having been at Paris about a month, during which he 

30 would not talk French, for fear of giving the natives an 
advantage over him in conversation. He pronounced them, 
also, to be an indelicate people, because a French footman 
touched the sugar with his fingers. That ingenious and 
amusing traveller, M. Simond, has defended his countrymen 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 71 

very successfully against Johnson's accusation, and has pointed 
out some English practices which, to an impartial spectator, 
would seem at least as inconsistent with physical cleanliness 
and social decorum as those which Johnson so bitterly repre- 
hended. To the sage, as Boswell loves to call him, it never 5 
occurred to doubt that there must be something eternally 
and immutably good in the usages to which he had been 
accustomed. In fact, Johnson's remarks on society beyond 
the bills of mortahty, are generally of much the same kind 
with those of honest Tom Dawson, the EngHsh footman in 10 
Dr. Moore's Zeluco. " Suppose the king of France has no 
sons, but only a daughter, then, when the king dies, this here 
daughter, according to that there law, cannot be made queen, 
but the next near relative, provided he is a man, is made king, 
and not the last king's daughter, which, to be sure, is very 15 
unjust. The French foot-guards are dressed in blue, and all 
the marching regiments in white, which has a very foolish 
appearance for soldiers ; and as for blue regimentals, it is 
only fit for the blue horse or the artillery." 

32. Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him to a 20 
state of society completely new to him ; and a salutary sus- 
picion of his own deficiencies seems on that occasion to have 
crossed his mind for the first time. He confessed, in the 
last paragraph of his Journey, that his thoughts on national 
manners were the thoughts of one who had seen but little, of 25 
one who had passed his time almost wholly in cities. This 
feeling, however, soon passed away. It is remarkable that to 
the last he entertained a fixed contempt for all those modes 
of life and those studies which tend to emancipate the mind 
from the prejudices of a particular age or a particular nation. 30 
Of foreign travel and of history he spoke with the fierce and 
boisterous contempt of ignorance. " What does a man learn 
by travelling? Is Beauclerk the better for travelling? What 
did Lord Charlemont learn in his travels, except that there 



72 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

was a snake in one of the pyramids of Egypt? " History was, 
in his opinion, to use the fine expression of Lord Plunkett, an 
old almanack : historians could, as he conceived, claim no 
higher dignity than that of almanack-makers ; and his favour- 
5 ite historians were those who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no 
higher dignity. He always spoke with contempt of Robert- 
son. Hume he would not even read. He affronted one of 
his friends for talking to him about Catiline's conspiracy, and 
declared that he never desired to hear of the Punic war again 

lo as long as he lived. 

^^. Assuredly one fact which does not directly affect our 
own interests, considered in itself, is no better worth knowing 
than another fact. The fact that there is a snake in a pyra- 
mid, or the fact that Hannibal crossed the Alps, are in them- 

25 selves as unprofitable to us as the fact that there is a green 
blind in a particular house in Threadneedle Street, or the 
fact that a Mr. Smith comes into the city every morning on 
the top of one of the Blackwall stages. But it is certain that 
those who will not crack the shell of history will never get at 

20 the kernel. Johnson, with hasty arrogance, pronounced the 
kernel worthless, because he saw no value in the shell. The 
real use of travelling to distant countries and of studying the 
annals of past times is to preserve men from the contraction 
of mind which those can hardly escape whose whole com- 

25 munion is with one generation and one neighbourhood, who 
arrive at conclusions by means of an induction not suffi- 
ciently copious, and who therefore constantly confound excep- 
tions with rules, and accidents with essential properties. In 
short, the real use of travelling and of studying history is to 

30 keep men from being what Tom Dawson was in fiction, and 
Samuel Johnson in reality. 

34. Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears 
far greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His conver- 
sation appears to have been quite equal to his writings in 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 73 

matter, and far superior to them in manner. When he talked, 
he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural expres- 
sions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write for 
the public, his style became . systematically vicious. All his 
books are written in a learned language, in a language which 5 
nobody hears from his mother or his nurse, in a language in 
which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love, 
in a language in which nobody ever thinks. It is clear that 
Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he 
wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were 10 
simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publi- 
cation, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. 
His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original 
of that work of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the 
translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions. 15 
" When we were taken up stairs," says he in one of his letters, 
"a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us 
was to lie." This incident is recorded in the Journey as 
follows : " Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose 
started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from 20 
the forge." Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. "The 
Rehearsal," he said, very unjustly, " has not wit enough to 
keep it sweet"; then, after a pause, "it has not vitality 
enough to preserve it from putrefaction." 

35. Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agree- 25 
able, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, 
for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of 
Milton or of Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit 
easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, 
and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always 30 
offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson. 

36. The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar to 
all our readers, and have been so often burlesqued, that it 
is almost superfluous to point them out. It is well known 



74 ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

that he made less use than any other eminent writer of those 
strong plain words, Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, of which 
the roots lie in the inmost depths of our language ; and that 
he felt a vicious partiality for terms which, long after our own 
5 speech had been fixed, were borrowed from the Greek and 
Latin, and which therefore, even when lawfully naturalised, 
must be considered as born aUens, not entitled to rank with 
the king's English. His constant practice of padding out a 
sentence with useless epithets, till it became as stiff as the 

lo bust of an exquisite, his antithetical forms of expression, con- 
stantly employed even where there is no opposition in the 
ideas expressed, his big words wasted on little things, his 
harsh inversions, so widely different from those graceful and 
easy inversions which give variety, spirit, and sweetness to 

15 the expression of our great old writers, all these peculiarities 
have been imitated by his admirers and parodied by his 
assailants, till the public has become sick of the subject. 

37. Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very justly, 
" If you were to write a fable about little fishes, doctor, you 

20 would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely 
ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether 
he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an 
empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he 
wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, 

25 like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him 
under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely 
as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay 
Cornelia describes her reception at the country-house of her 
relations in such terms as these : "I was surprised, after the 

30 civilities of my first reception, to find, instead of the leisure 
and tranquillity which a rural life always promises, and, if 
well conducted, might always afford, a confused wildness of 
care, and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which every 
face was clouded, and every motion agitated." The gentle 



ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 75 

Tranquilla informs us, that she " had not passed the earHer 
part of Ufa without the flattery of courtship, and the joys of 
triumph ; but had danced the round of gaiety amidst the 
murmurs of envy and the gratulations of applause, had been 
attended from pleasure to pleasure by the great, the sprightly, 5 
and the vain, and had seen her regard solicited by the obse- 
quiousness of gallantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity of 
love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not wear his pet- 
ticoats with a worse grace. The reader may well cry out, 
with honest Sir Hugh Evans, " I Hke not when a 'oman has 10 
a great peard : I spy a great peard under her mufiler." ^ 

38. We had something more to say. But our article is 
already too long ; and we must close it. We would fain 
part in good humour from the hero, from the biographer, 
and even from the editor, who, ill as he has performed his 15 
task, has at least this claim to our gratitude, that he has 
induced us to read Boswell's book again. As we close it, the 
club-room is before us, and the table on which stands the 
omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are 
assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvass of 20 
Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall 
thin form of Langton, the courtly sneer of Beauclerk, and the 
beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and 
Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is 
chat strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of 25 
those among whom we have been brought up, the gigantic 
body, the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, 
the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig 
with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten 
and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving 3° 
with convulsive twitches ; we see the heavy form rolling ; we 

1 It is proper to observe that this passage bears a very close resem- 
blance to a passage in the Rambler (No. 20). The resemblance may 
possibly be the effect of unconscious plagiarism. — Macaulay. 



Jf) ESSAY ON BOSWELL'S JOHNSON 

hear it puffing; and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the 
"What then, sir?" and the "No, sir!" and the "You don't 
see your way through the question, sir ! " 

39. What a singular destiny has been that of this remark- 

5 able man ! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and 
in ours as a companion. To receive from his contemporaries 
that full homage which men of genius have in general received 
only from posterity ! To be more intimately known to pos- 
terity than other men are known to their contemporaries ! 

10 That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient is, 
in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writ- 
ings, which he probably expected to be immortal, is every day 
fading ; w^hile those pecuHarities of manner and that careless 
table-talk, the memory of which, he probably thought, would 

15 die with him, are likely to be remembered as long as the 
English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe. 






NOTES 



Page 1. Line 4. Lichfield. Observe how near Lichfield comes 
to bemg m the exact center of England. 

1 4-5. the midland counties. As you run your eye over the map, 
what counties should you naturally include under this head ? In what 
county is Lichfield ? 

1 9. oracle. " Johnson, the Lichfield librarian, is now here ; he 
propagates learning all over this diocese, and advanceth knowledge to 
its just height; all the clergy here are his pupils, and suck all they 
have from him." — From a letter written by Rev. George Plaxton, 
quoted by Boswell. 

1 10-11. a strong religious and political sympathy. Macaulay's use 
of the article would lead us to think that the two kinds of sympathy 
were_yer5[_closely connected. Michael Johnson was a member of the 
Established Church of England, and at heart a believer in the "divine 
right " kings. The student who is not familiar with the history of 
this period will do well to look \\^ Jacobite in Brewer's Historic Note-book 
and then to read in some brief history an account of the sovereigns in 
possession who followed James II, — William and Mary (1689-1702) 
and Anne (1702-1714). Bosw^ell says, "He no doubt had an early 
attachment to the House of Stuart ; but his zeal had cooled as his 
reason strengthened." 

1 16. In the child. Pause to take the glimpse ahead which this 
sentence gives. The construction helps one to remember the three 
kinds of peculiarities and the order in which they are mentioned. 

2 26. Augustan delicacy of taste. You may read in Harper's 
Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, in the article on 
Augustus Csesar, how " the court of Augustus thus became a school of 
culture, v/here men of genius acquired that delicacy of taste, elevation 
of sentiment, and purity of expression which characterize the writers 
of the age." 

2 32. Petrarch. Does Macaulay imply that Petrarch is one of 
" the great restorers of learning" ? See Renaissatice in The Century Dic- 
tionary and Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities. 



78 NOTES 

Note that Petrarch " may be said to have rediscovered Greek, which for 
some six centuries had been lost to the western world." Keep in mind, 
too, that his friend and disciple, Boccaccio, translated Homer into Latin. 

3 11. Pembroke College. The University of Oxford consists of 
twenty-one colleges which together form a corporate body. The 
colleges are " endowed by their founders and others with estates and 
benefices ; out of the revenue arising from the estates, as well as other 
resources, the Heads and Senior and Junior Members 07i the foundation 
receive an income, and the expenses of the colleges are defrayed. 
Members not on the foundation, called ' independent members,' reside 
entirely at their own expense." Among the members on the founda- 
tion are the Heads, Fellows, and Scholars. 

3 17-18. Macrobius. A Roman grammarian who probably lived at 
the beginning of the fifth century. 

3 20. about three years. Apparently Johnson remained at O.xford 
only fourteen months. See Dr. Hill's Dr. fohnson, His Frie?ids and 
His Critics. 

4 1-2. " It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. I was 
miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my 
wit ; so I disregarded all power and all authority." — Johnson, quoted 
by Boswell. Although aware of what he considered the defects of 
his college, Johnson loved Pembroke as long as he lived. He delighted 
in boasting of its eminent graduates and would have left to it his house 
at Lichfield had not wiser friends induced him to bequeath it to some 
poor relatives. 

4 15-16. his father died. " I now therefore see that I must make 
my own fortune. Meanwhile let me take care that the powers of my 
mind be not debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me 
into any criminal act." — Johnson, quoted by Boswell. 

5 7,1. Walmesley. " I am not able to name a man of equal knowl- 
edge. His acquaintance with books was great, and what he did not 
immediately know, he could, at least, tell where to find." — Johnson, 
quoted by Boswell. 

6 13. Politian. Another of "the great restorers of learning" 
(see 2 31). His beginning of a translation of the Iliad into Latin 
attracted the attention of Lorenzo de' Medici, under whose patronage 
he became one of the first scholars of Italy. 

6 17. fell in love. Boswell says that Johnson's early attachments 
to the fair sex were " veiy transient," and considers it but natural that 
when the pa'^sion of love once seized him it should be exceedingly 
strong, concentrated as it was in one object. 

\ 



NOTES 79 

6 22. Queensberrys and Lepels. Families of high rank in England. 

7 3-4. half ludicrous. Carlyle says it is no matter for ridicule that 
the man " whose look all men both laughed at and shuddered at, should 
find any brave female heart, to acknowledge, at first sight and hearing 
of him, ' This is the most sensible man I ever met with ' ; and then, 
with generous courage, to take him to itself, and say Be thou mine ! 
. . . Johnson's deathless affection for his Tatty was always venerable 
and noble." 

7 6-7. At Edial. Although this enterprise did not prosper, the man, 
as Carlyle says, "was to become a Teacher of grown gentlemen, in the 
most surprising way ; a man of Letters, and Ruler of the British Nation 
for some time, — not of their bodies merely, but of their minds; not 
over them, but in them." 

7 13. David Garrick. The mere fact that this celebrated actor and 
successful manager brought out twenty-four of Shakspere's plays is 
reason enough why we should look him up. A slight knowledge of his 
career enables one to enjoy all the more the frequent references to him 
in Boswell's Life of Johnson. After reading the sketch in the Encyclo- 
pcedia Britannica it would be a good plan to read Boswell's references 
consecutively by means of the index. 

8 9. Fielding. For an enjoyable short sketch of the first great 
English novelist, see Thackeray's English Hii7nourists. 

8 10. The Beggar's Opera, by John Gay, appeared in 1728. 
8 19. knot. See The Century Diciionaty. 

8 34. Drury Lane. A street in the heart of the city, near the 
Strand, — one of the chief thoroughfares. It was beginning to lose its 
old-time respectabihty. 

9 9. the sight of food. Once when Boswell was giving a dinner 
and one of the company was late, Boswell proposed to order dinner to 
be served, adding, " ' Ought six people to be kept waiting for one ? ' 
'Why, yes,' answered Johnson, with a delicate humanity, 'if the one 
will suffer more by your sitting down than the six will do by waiting.' " 
Is it probable that Macaulay exaggerates ? 

9 27. Harleian Library. The library collected by Robert Harley, 
First Earl of Oxford. Osborne afterwards bought it and Johnson did 
some of the cataloguing for him. As to Osborne's punishment, Boswell 
says : " The simple truth I had from Johnson himself. ' Sir, he was 
impertinent to me, and I beat him. But it was not in his shop : it w^as 
in my own chamber.' " 

10 6. Blefuscu, Mildendo. If Blefuscu and Mildendo look unfamiliar, 
go to Lilliput for them. (See Gulliver's Travels.) 



8o NOTES 

10 9. " Johnson told me, that as soon as he found that the speeches 
were thought genuine, he determmed that he would write no more of 
them ; for he 'would not be accessory to the propagation of falsehood.' " 
— Boswell. 

10 15. Cf. The Traveller. Do you suppose that either Johnson or 
Goldsmith really believed that one form of government is as good as 
another ? 

10 ]7. Montagues, See Shakspere's A'^w^i? ««^y«//>/. 

10 J 8. Greens. In Roman chariot races there was the bitterest 
rivalry between the different colors of the factions, and the betting 
often led to scenes of riot and bloodshed. Once in Justinian's reign, 
in the great circus at Constantinople, the tumult was not suppressed 
till about thirty thousand of the rioters had been killed. See Gibbon, 
Decline and Fall., Chapter XL. 

10 Q2. Sacheverell. What do you gather from the context about 
this preacher } Was he high church ? Did he preach resistance to 
the king ? 

10 .31. Tom Tempest. See Johnson's Idler, No. lo. 

10 32. Laud. Read in Gardiner's Student's History of Etigland ihe 
account of this archbishop who tried to enforce uniformity of worship. 

11 2-4. Hampden, Falkland, Clarendon. In the case of these 
three statesmen, as well as in the case of Laud, the context shows 
which of them were supporters of Charles I and which resisted him. 
Does Macaulay imply that Johnson would have been excusable if he 
had sympathized with Hampden's refusal to pay " ship money " .-' 

11 5. Roundheads. If you do not know why they were so called, 
see The Century Dictionary. 

11 20-21. Great Rebellion. If in doubt as to which rebellion 
Macaulay refers, see The Century Dictionary or Brewer's Dictiona7y of 
Phrase and Fable. 

12 2, 8, 10. Juvenal. Dryden has translated five of the poem.s of 
this great Roman satirist. It is worth while to compare Johnson's 
London, a free imitation of the Third Satire, with Dryden's version. 
Johnson's poem may be found in Hales's Longer English Poems. 

12 19. Boswell, too, asks us to remember Pope's candor and liberal 
conduct on this occasion. Let us not forget it. 

13 8. Psalmanazar. Pretending to be a Japanese, this Frenchman 
wrote what he called a History of Formosa. Although fabulous, it 
deceived the learned world. 

13 14-15. blue ribands. Worn by members of the Order of the 
Garter. 



NOTES 8 I 

13 16. Newgate. The notorious London prison. 

13 26. Piazza here has its first meaning, — " an open square in a 
town surrounded by buildings or colonnades, a plaza." This space was 
once the "convent" garden of the monks of Westminster. For a brief 
sketch of it down to the time its " coffee houses and taverns became 
the fashionable lounging-places for the authors, wits, and noted men of 
the kingdom," see The Century Dictionary. 

14 11-12. Grub Street. " Originally the name of a street in Moorfields 
in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and 
temporary poems ; whence any mean production is called grubstreet. 

* I 'd sooner ballads write, and grubstreet lays.' Gay." 

— Johnson's Dictiojiajy, edition of 1773. 

14 23. Warburton. Bishop Warburton thus praised Johnson in the 
Preface to his own edition of Shakspere, and Johnson showed his 
appreciation by saying to Boswell, " He praised me at a time when 
praise was of value to me." On another occasion, when asked whether 
he considered Warburton a superior critic to Theobald, he replied, 
" He 'd make two-and-fifty Theobalds, cut into slices ! " Johnson's 
sketch of him, in the Life of Pope, Boswell calls " the tribute due to 
him when he was no longer in 'high place,' but numbered with 
the dead." 

14 28-31. He employed six amanuenses, not a large number of assist- 
ants for a task of such magnitude. Nor was the sum of fifteen hundred 
guineas a generous one from which to pay these assistants. 

14 33. Chesterfield. Every young man should read an abridged 
edition of Chesterfield's Letters to his Son ; for example, the volume 
in the Knickerbocker Nugget Series. It contains much that is worth 
remembering, and the style is entertaining. 

15 17. It is hard to realize what a stupendous task Johnson under- 
took when he began his Dictionary. Other dictionaries, notably Bailey's, 
were in existence, but they were mere beginnings of what he had in 
mind. As lists of words, with explanations of the meanings, they were 
useful, but none of them could reasonably be considered a standard. 
A standard Johnson's certainly was. Although no etymologist, in 
general he not only gave full and clear definitions, but he chose 
remarkably happy illustrations of the meanings of words. By taking 
care, also, to select passages which were interesting and profitable/ 
reading as well as elegant English, he succeeded in making probal^ 
the most readable dictionary that has ever appeared. 



82 NOTES 

15 23. For the Vanity of Human Wishes, se.&YldAes'^ Loui^er English 
Poems or Syle's From Milton to Tennyson. As in the case of London, 
the student will wish to compare Dryden's translation. 

16 8-9. And this was eleven years after the London had appeared ; 
as Boswell says, his fame was already established. 

16 13. Goodman's Fields. Garrick made this theater successful. 

16 15. Drury Lane Theatre. Near Drury Lane. (See note to 
8 34.) Other prominent actors in this famous old theatre were Kean, 
the Kembles, and Mrs. Siddons. 

17 13. See page 7. The story on which Iretie is based is as follows : — 

Mahomet the Great, first emperor of the Turks, in the year 1453 '^^'^ siege to 
the city of Constantinople, then possessed by the Greeks, and, after an obstinate 
resistance, took and sacked it. Among the many young women whom the com- 
manders thought fit to lay hands on and present to him was one named Irene, 
a Greek, of incomparable beauty and such rare perfection of body and mind, that 
the emperor, becoming enamored of her, neglected the care of his government 
and empire for two whole years, and thereby so exasperated the Janizaries, that 
they mutinied and threatened to dethrone him. To prevent this mischief, Mus- 
tapha Bassa, a person of great credit with him, undertook to represent to him 
the great danger to which he lay exposed by the indulgence of his passion : he 
called to his remembrance the character, actions, and achievements of his pred- 
ecessors, and the state of his government ; and, in short, so roused him from 
his lethargy, that he took a horrible resolution to silence the clamors of his people 
by the sacrifice of this admirable creature. Accordingly, he commanded her to 
be dressed and adorned in the richest manner that she and her attendants could 
devise, and against a certain hour issued orders for the nobility and leaders of 
his army to attend him in the great hall of his palace. When they were all 
assembled, himself appeared with great pomp and magnificence, leading his 
captive by the hand, unconscious of guilt and ignorant of his design. With a 
furious and menacing look, he gave the beholders to understand that he meant 
to remove the cause of their discontent ; but bade them first view that lady, whom 
he held with his left hand, and say whether any of them, possessed of a jewel so 
rare and precious, would for any cause forego her ; to which they answered that 
he had great reason for his affection toward her. To this the emperor replied 
that he would convince them that he was yet master of himself. And having so 
said, presently, with one of his hands catching the fair Greek by the hair of the 
head, and drawing his falchion with the other, he, at one blow, struck off her 
head, to the great terror of them all ; and having so done, he said unto them, 
" Now by this judge whether your emperor is able to bridle his affections or not." 
— Hawkins's Life of Jolnison. 

17 20-21. Tatler, Spectator. It is to be hoped that the reader 
needs no introduction to these papers or to the account of them in 
Macaulay's essay on Addison. 



NOTES 83 

17 30. Rambler. A suitable title for a series of moral discourses ? 
At the time of the undertaking he composed a prayer to the effect that 
he might in this way promote the glory of Almighty God and the salva- 
tion both of himself and others. — F^-ayers and Meditations, p. 9, quoted 
by Bos we 11. 

17 31-32. Boswell considers it a strong confirmation of the truth of 
Johnson's remark that " a man may write at any time if he will set him- 
self doggedly to it," that " notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, 
his depression of spirits, and his labour in carrying on his Dictionary, he 
answered the stated calls of the press twice a week from the stores of 
his mind during all that time." 

17 34. Richardson. Samuel Richardson. When he was a boy, the 
girls employed him to write love letters for them ; and his novels, 
written in after life, also took the form of letters. He wrote Pamela, 
or ]^irtue Rewarded ; Clarissa Harlowe, or the History of a Yontig Lady ; 
and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (about 1750). Johnson 
called him '• an author who has enlarged the knowledge of human nature 
and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue." 

18 2. Young. Johnson held a high opinion of Edward Young's 
most famous work. Night Thong/Us, and Boswell writes, " No book 
whatever can be recommended to young persons, with better hopes of 
seasoning their minds with vital religion, than Young's Night Thoughts.''^ 
— Hartley. David Hartley, prominent as a psychologist, and as a 
physician benevolent and studious. For intimate friends he chose 
such men as Warburton and Young. 

18 3. Dodington. A member of Parliament who patronized men 
of letters and was complimented by Young and Fielding. 

18 7. Frederic. When Frederick, Prince of Wales, became the 
center of the opposition to Walpole, in 1737, among the leaders of his 
political friends, called "the Leicester House Party," — at that time 
Leicester House was the residence of the Prince of Wales, — were 
Chesterfield, William Pitt, and Bubb Dodington. 

18 25. In regard to the use of antiquated and hard words, for which 
Johnson was censured, he says in Idler No. 90, " He that thinks with 
more extent than another, will want words of larger meaning." 

18 30-32. brilliancy . . . eloquence . . . humour. Johnson wrote 
many of these discourses so hastily, says Boswell, that he did not even 
read them over before they were printed. Boswell continues : " Sir 
Joshua Reynolds once asked him by what means he had attained his 
extraordinary accuracy and flow of language. He told him, that he had 
early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every occasion, and 



84 NOTES 

in every company : to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible 
language he could put it in ; and that by constant practice, and never 
suffering any careless expressions to escape him, or attempting to deliver 
his thoughts without arranging them in the clearest manner, it became 
habitual to him." One man who knew Johnson intimately observed 
" that he always talked as if he was talking upon oath." 

18 32-19 10. Cf. Johnson's comment : " Whoever wishes to attain an 
English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, 
must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison." — Boswell, 1 750. 

19 1-2. Sir Roger, etc. These two sets of allusions offer a good 
excuse for handling complete editions of the Spectator 2in<\ the Ratribler. 

19 21. the Gunnings. " The beautiful Misses Gunning," two sisters, 
were born in Ireland. They went to London in 1751, were continually 
followed by crowds, and were called " the handsomest women alive." — 
Lady Mary. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Let one of the ency- 
clopaedias introduce you to this relative of Fielding who laughed at 
Pope when he made love to her, and whose wit had full play in the 
brilliant letters from Constantinople which added greatly to her repu- 
tation as an independent thinker. 

19 23-24. the Monthly Review. This Whig periodical would not 
appeal to Johnson as did its rival, the Critical Review. It was the 
Monthly that Goldsmith did hack work for. Smollett wrote for the 
other. See Irving's Life of Goldsmith, Chapter VII. 

19 31. It was pubhshed in 1755, price £^ 10 j., bound. 

20 17. The letter, which needs no comment, is as follows: 

February 7, 1755- 
To THE Right Honourable the Earl of Chesterfield. 

My Lord, 

I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of the World, that two papers, in 
which my Dictionary is recommended to the publick, were written by your Lord- 
ship. To be so distinguished, is an honour, which, being very little accustomed 
to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to 
acknowledge. 

When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I was 
overpowered, Hke the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address ; and 
could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vainqiieiir dii vainqueur 
de la ^^;-;-^.— that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world con- 
tending ; but I found my attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor 
modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lord- 
ship in publick. T had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and 
uncourtly scholar can possess, I have done all that I could ; and no man is well 
pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. 



NOTES 85 

Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in your outward rooms 
or was repulsed from your door ; during which time I have been pushing on my 
work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, 
at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of 
encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I 
never had a Patron before. 

The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a 
native of the rocks. 

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling 
for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help ? 
The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, 
had been kind ; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it ; 
till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. 
I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit 
has been received, or to be unwilling that the Publick should consider me as 
owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. 

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer 
of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be 
possible, with less ; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in 
which I once boasted myself with so much exultation. 

My Lord, 
Your Lordship's most humble, 

Most obedient servant, 

Sam. Johnson. 

20 24. Home Tooke. A name assumed by John Home, a politician 
and philologist whose career is briefly outlined in T/ie Century Diction- 
ary. The passage which so moved him follow^s. 

In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be for- 
gotten that much likewise is performed ; and though no book was ever spared 
out of tenderness to the authour, and the world is little solicitous to know whence 
proceeded the faults of that which it condemns ; yet it may gratify curiosity to 
inform it that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the 
learned, and without any patronage of the great ; not in the soft obscurities of 
retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience 
and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malig- 
nant criticism to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have 
only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If 
the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few 
volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the 
aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians, did 
not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied criticks of France, 
when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its 
oeconomy, and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented 



86 NOTES 

without the praise of perfection, which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, 
what would it avail me ? 1 have protracted my work till most of those whom I 
wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are 
' empty sounds : I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to 
fear or hope from censure or from praise. 

This extract is taken from the fourth edition, London, mdcclxxiii, 
the last to receive Johnson's corrections. If you possibly can get the 
opportunity, turn these volumes over enough to find a few of the 
whimsical definitions, such, for example, as that of lexicographer- 
according to Johnson " a writer of dictionaries, a hixrmless drudge.^'' 
Other words worth looking up are excise, oats, and Jietworks. 

21 6. Junius and Skinner. Johnson frankly admitted that for 
etymologies he turned to the shelf which contained the etymological 
dictionaries of these seventeenth-century students of the Teutonic 
languages. This phase of dictionary making was not considered so 
deeply then as it is now. 

21 13. spunging-houses. Johnson's Dictionary says : " Spunging- 
house. A house to which debtors are taken before commitment to 
prison, where the bailiffs sponge upon them, or riot at their cost." 

21 26. Jenyns. This writer, who, according to Boswell, " could 
very happily play with a light subject," ventured so far beyond his 
depth that it was easy for Johnson to expose him. 

22 10. Rasselas. Had Johnson written nothing else, says Boswell, 
Rasselas " would have rendered his name immortal in the world of 
literature. ... It has been translated into most, if not all, of the 
modern languages." 

22 12. Miss Lydia Languish. Of course plays are not necessarily 
written to be read, but Sheridan's well-known comedy, The Rivals, is 
decidedly readable. Every one should be familiar with Miss Languish 
and Mrs. Malaprop. 

23 8. Bruce. The Dictionary of National Biography says that James 
Bruce — whose Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile, five volumes, 
appeared in 1790 — "will always remain the poet, and his work the 
epic, of African travel." 

23 13. Mrs. Lennox. A woman whose literary efforts Johnson 
encouraged so much as he did Mrs. Lennox's is certainly worth 
looking up in the index to Boswell's Johnson. — Mrs. Sheridan, the 
dramatist's mother, gave Johnson many an entertaining evening in her 
home. She and her son entered heartily into the lively, stimulating 
conversations he loved. 



NOTES 87 

23 25. Hector . . . Aristotle. The sacking of Troy is generally 
assigned to the twelfth century B.C. Aristotle lived eight centuries 
later. — Julio Romano. An Italian painter of the fifteenth century. 

24 5. the Lord Privy Seal. Some documents require only the 
privy seal ; others must have the great seal too. For Johnson's admis- 
sion that the printer was wise in striking out the reference alluded to, 
see the index to Hosv^'eWs, Johnson, under Gower. 

24 14. Oxford. By recalling what Macaulay said in the early part 
of the essay (10 26, 27) about Oxford, and by bearing in mind what 
House [of Stuart "i of Hanover ?] George the Third belonged to, one 
sees point to " was becoming loyal." 

24 14-18. Study these four short sentences in connection with the 
preceding sentence beginning " George the Third." To what extent 
are they a repetition ? To what extent an explanation ? 

24 22. accepted. When, in answer to Johnson's question to Lord 
Bute, " Pray, my Lord, what am I expected to do for this pension ? " 
he received the ready reply, " It is not given you for anything you are 
to do, but for what you have done," he hesitated no longer. 

Three hundred a year was a large sum in Johnson's eyes at that 
time. Whether he wrote less than he would have written without it 
may be questioned, says Mr. Hill, but he adds that probably " without 
the pension he would not have lived to write the second greatest of 
his works — the Lives of the Poets P 

25 19. a ghost . . . Cock Lane. If you will read Boswell's account 
of the affair, you will probably conclude that Johnson was not quite so 
" weak " as Macaulay implies. 

25 26. Churchill. One of the reigning wits of the day, Boswell says. 

26 3. The preface. Other critics speak with more enthusiasm of 
the good sense and the clear expression of the preface, and find that 
these qualities are not altogether lacking in the notes. 

26 8. Wilhelm Meister. The hero of Goethe's novel of the same 
name. You may have read this passage on Hamlet in Rolfe's edition 
(p. 14), quoted from Furness's Hamlet, Vol. II, pp. 272 ff. Sprague also 
quotes it in his edition, p. 13. 

26 26. Ben. The eighteenth-century Johnson has been followed 
by the nineteenth-century critics in putting a high estimate on the 
Jonson who wrote Every Man in His Humor. We are told that 
Shakspere took one of the parts in this play, acted in 1598. If you 
are not satisfied with the account in The Century Dictionary, or with 
any encyclopaedia article, see The English Poets, edited by T. H. Ward, 
Vol. II (The Macmillan Company). 



88 NOTES 

26 33-34. ^schylus, Euripides, Sophocles. Three great contem- 
porary Greek tragedians. 

27 3. Fletcher. Point out why an editor of Shakspere's plays should 
be familiar with the work of this group of Elizabethan dramatists. 

27 11. Royal Academy. " His Majesty having the preceding year 
[1768] instituted the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Johnson had 
won the honour of being appointed Professor in Ancient Literature." — 
Boswell. Goldsmith was Professor in Ancient History in the same insti- 
tution, and Boswell was Secretary for Foreign Correspondence. Look 
in The CeiiUay Dictionary under academy, the third meaning, and recall 
whatever you may have heard or read about the French Academy. 

27 12. the King. " His Majesty expressed a desire to have the 
literary biography of this country ably executed, and proposed to Dr. 
Johnson to undertake it." — Boswell. Read Boswell's account of the 
interview. In consulting the index look under George III. 

27 22. colloquial talents. Madame d'Arblay once said that John- 
son had about him more " fun, and comical humour, and love of non- 
sense " than almost anybody else she ever saw. 

28 23. Goldsmith. Macaulay's article on Goldsmith in The Ency- 
clopcedia Britannica is short, and so thoroughly readable that there is 
no excuse for not being familiar with it. Boswell is continually giving 
interesting glimpses of Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, and by taking advantage 
of the index in the Life of Johnson one may in half an hour learn a great 
deal about this remarkable man. According to Boswell, "he had 
sagacity enough to cultivate assiduously the acquaintance of Johnson, 
and his faculties were gradually enlarged by the contemplation of such 
a model." 

28 24. Reynolds. We can learn from short articles about Sir 
Joshua's career, but the index to Boswell's Johnson will introduce us to 
the good times the great portrait painter had with the great conversa- 
tionalist whom we are studying. Reynolds was the first proposer of 
the Club, and " there seems to have been hardly a day," says Robina 
Napier, " when these friends did not meet in the painting room or in 
general society." Ruskin says, " Titian paints nobler pictures and 
Vandyke had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as 
Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper." 
The business of his art " was not to criticise, but to observe," and for 
this purpose the hours he spent at the Club might be as profitable as 
those spent in his painting room. It will be interesting to make ^ list 
of some of the most notable "subjects" Reynolds painted. — Burke. 
Be sure to read Boswell's account of the famous Round Robin. It will 



NOTES 8g 

make you feel better acquainted with Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, and 
Goldsmith. The student will find valuable material in Professor 
Lamont's edition of Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America, pub- 
lished by Ginn & Company. 

28 25. Gibbon. You noticed on the Round Robin the autograph 
of the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire ? 

28 26. Jones. Sir William Henry Rich Jones was " the first Eng- 
lish scholar to master Sanskrit, and to recognize its importance for 
comparative philology," says The Century Dictio7iary. 

29 9. Johnson's Club. The Club still flourishes. Both Scott and 
Macaulay belonged to it. 

29 14. James Boswell. " Out of the fifteen milUons that then 
lived, and had bed and board, in the British Islands, this man has pro- 
vided us a grQ2itQY pleasure than any other individual, at whose cost we 
now enjoy ourselves; perhaps has done us a greditex service than can 
be specially attributed to more than two or three : yet, ungrateful that 
we are, no written or spoken eulogy of James Boswell anywhere 
exists ; his recompense in solid pudding (so far as copyright went) was 
not excessive ; and as for the empty praise, it has altogether been 
denied him. Men are unwiser than children ; they do not know the 
hand that feeds." 

So Carlyle writes of the man ; the book, he says, is " beyond any 
other product of the eighteenth century " ; it draws aside the curtains of 
the Past and gives us a picture which changeful Time cannot harm or 
hide. The picture charms generation after generation because it is 
true. " It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict measured 
sobriety, to say that this Book of Boswell's will give us more real 
insight into the History of England during those days than twenty 
other Books, falsely entitled ' Histories,' which take to themselves 
that special aim. ... The thing I want to see is not Redbook Lists, 
and Court Calendars, and Parliamentary Registers, but the Life of 
Man in England: what men did, thought, suffered, enjoyed; the form, 
especially the spirit, of their terrestrial existence, its outward environ- 
ment, its inward principle; how and what it was ; whence it proceeded, 
whither it was tending. . . . 

" Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should be ' the essence 

of innumerable Biographies,' will tell us, question it as we like, less 

, ihan one genuine Biography may do, pleasantly and of its own accord ! " 

--- Mr. Leslie Stephen says that " Macaulay's graphic description of his 

absurdities, and Carlyle's more penetrating appreciation of his higher 



90 NOTES 

qualities, contain all that can be said"; but the more recent testimony 
of Dr. George B. Hill, in Dr. Johnson, His Friends and His Critics, 
should count for something. Dr. Hill points out that while Macaulay 
grants Boswell immortality he refuses him greatness, and calls attention 
to what he considers elements of greatness. In regard to the accuracy 
of a biographer who would " run half over London, in order to fix a 
date correctly," he says : " That love, I might almost say that passion 
for accuracy, that distinguished Boswell in so high a degree does not 
belong to a mind that is either mean or feeble. Mean minds are 
indifferent to truth, and feeble minds can see no importance in a date." 

29 27. Wilkes. John Wilkes, a notorious politician, was imprisoned 
for writing an article in which he attacked George the Third. The 
liberty of the press was involved and Wilkes was released, much to the 
delight of the people. For a brief summary of the Bill of Rights, see 
Brewer's Historic Note-book or A Handbook of Efiglish Political History, 
by Acland and Ransome. 

29 29. Whitfield. Macaulay's short sentence implies, does it not, 
that Whitfield (or Whitefield) was a noisy, open-air preacher among 
the Calvinistic Methodists ? In testing the accuracy of this inference 
in The Ejicyclopcedia Britannica or in Franklin's Autobiography, note in 
what countries Whitefield preached, and where he died. Boswell 
quotes Johnson's opinion of Whitefield in two places. 

29 30. In a happy hour. May i6, 1763. By all means read Bos- 
well's account of the rough reception he received and the persistence 
necessary to secure the fastening. 

31 14. pity . . . esteem. The Thrales were not alone in overlook- 
ing these oddities. " His tricks and contortions, a subject for pity not 
ridicule," says Mr. Hoste, " were ignored by the celebrated wits and 
beauties who visited him in his gloomy 'den,' and by the duchesses 
and other distinguished ladies who gathered ' four and five deep ' around 
him at fashionable assemblies, hanging on his sentences, and contended 
for the nearest places to his chair." 

31 15. Southwark. South of the commercial center of London 
and across the Thames. 

31 16. Streatham. Nearly as far northwest of Fleet Street as 
Southwark is southeast of it, the site on which the British Museum 
now stands. 

3134. Maccaroni. ^^q The Century Dictionary ox ^x^y^tx'?, Hand- 
book of Phrase and Fable. 

32 21. Levett. Of Levett, Goldsmith said to Boswell, " He is po--. 
and honest, which is recommendation enough to Johnson." -^^ 



NOTES 



91 



32 30. the Mitre Tavern. " The Mitre Tavern still stands in 
Pleet Street : but where now is its Scot-and-lot paying, beef-and-ale 
loving, cock-hatted, potbellied Landlord ; its rosy-faced, assiduous Land- 
lady, with all her shining brass-pans, waxed tables, well-filled larder- 
shelves ; her cooks, and bootjacks, and errand-boys, and watery-mouthed 
hangers-on ? Gone ! Gone ! The becking waiter, that with wreathed 
smiles was wont to spread for Samuel and Bozzy their ' supper of the 
gods,' has long since pocketed his last sixpence ; and vanished, six- 
pences and all, like a ghost at cockcrowing." Yet, Carlyle goes on to 
say, thanks to this book of Boswell's, " they who are gone are still 
here ; though hidden they are revealed, though dead they yet speak." 

33 27. Hebrides. Locate these picturesque islands on the map. 

34 10. Lord Mansfield. William Murray, chief justice of the King's 
Bench from 1756 to 1788, has been called "the founder of English 
commercial law." 

34 23. Macpherson. In 1760 James Macpherson published what 
purported to be fragments of Gaelic verse wdth translations. These 
were so interesting that he was sent to the Highlands to hunt for more, 
and within three years he published the Poevis of Ossiau, consisting 
of two epics, " Fingal " and "Temora." Their genuineness has been 
discussed ever since. Evidently Johnson settled the matter to his own 
satisfaction and to Macaulay's, and you may be interested in what Bos- 
well has to say. At the same time it seems clear that Johnson went 
too far in his charge of forgery. Macpherson probably did not find a 
complete epic, yet he undoubtedly found some Gaelic poetry. 

34 27. contemptuous terms. Boswell gives the following letter : 

Mr. James Macpherson, 

I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall 
do my best to repel ; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me. 
I hops I shall not be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the 
menaces of a ruffian. 

What would you have me retract? I thought your book an imposture; I 

think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to the 

publick, which I here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abilities, 

since your Homer, are not so formidable ; and what I hear of your morals, 

incHnes me to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove. 

You may print this if you will. 

Sam. Johnson. 

35 11-12. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hendersons. 

If Johnson and Macaulay do not tell enough about these men, Boswell 
'loes. 



92 NOTES 

35 30. Bentley. Richard Bentley (1662-1742), a well-known Eng- 
lish classical scholar and critic. 

36 13. Taxation no Tyranny. The rest of the title is An Answer 
to the Resohdiotts and Address of the American Congress. 

37 6. Wilson, Richard Wilson was one of the greatest English 
landscape painters, says 77/ 1? Dictionary 0/ National Biography. 

37 14. Cowley. The man who wrote 

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain. 

37 18. Restoration. The International Dictionary offers a brief 
explanation in case you are not absolutely certain of the exact meaning. 

37 23. Walmesley. See note to 5 32. — Button's. Button's coffee- 
house flourished earlier in the century. Do you remember any other 
reference to it .' to Will's ? to Child's ? — Gibber. Colley Gibber, actor 
and dramatist, altered and adapted some of Shakspere's plays. Both 
Johnson and Boswell express their opinions of him frankly enough. 
He was appointed poet laureate in 1730. 

37 25. Orrery. Orrery did more than enjoy this privilege, — he 
wrote a book entitled Remarks on the Life and Writings of fonathan 
Swift. Boswell records Johnson's opinion of it. What other great 
literary men enjoyed the society of Swift ? The Century Dictionary 
gives a column to Swift, and Johnson has a sketch in his Lives of the 
Poets. 

37 26. services of no very honourable kind. By supplying Pope 
with private intelligence for his Dunciad he " gained the esteem of 
Pope and the enmity of his victims." 

38 32. Malone. Edmund Malone was a friend of Johnson, Burke, 
and Reynolds. He wrote a supplement to Johnson's edition of Shaks- 
pere, published an edition of Reynolds's works, and after bringing out 
his own edition of Shakspere, left material for another edition, which 
was published by James Boswell the younger in 1821. Boswell's 
Malone, the " third variorum " edition, is generally considered the best. 
To Boswell the elder, an intimate friend, he was of much assistance in 
preparing the Life of fohnson, and he edited with valuable notes the 
third, fourth, fifth, and sixth reissues of the work. 

40 21-22. In a solemn and tender prayer. 

Almighty God, Father of all mercy, help me by thy grace, that I may, with 
humble and sincere thankfulness, remember the comforts and conveniences which 
I have enjoyed at this place ; and that I may resign them with holy submission, 
equally trusting in thy protection when thou givest, and when thou take&t-away. 
Have mercy upon me, O Lord, have mercy upon me. 



NOTES 



93 



To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, guide, 
and defend them, that they may so pass through this world, as finally to enjoy 
in thy presence everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. — Boswell's 
Johnson. 

41 1. Italian fiddler. A violinist of much talent, Piozzi was 
the music master from Brescia who, a little over three years after 
Mr. Thrale's death, married the widow. After learning what you can 
from Boswell, you will enjoy some such account as the Eticyclopcedia 
Britannica offers. While doing your reading it may be well to keep 
in mind what two or three critics have said. Mr. Mowbray Morris 
writes : " After all the abuse showered on the unfortunate woman it is 
pleasant to know that the marriage proved a happy one in every 
respect. Piozzi, who was really a well-mannered, amiable man, took 
every care of his wife's fortune, and on their return to England her 
family and friends were soon reconciled to him." Mr. Leslie Stephen 
says: "Her love of Piozzi, which was both warm and. permanent, is 
the most amiable feature of her character." Mr. Herbert Paul, after 
praising Macaulay's Life of Johnson, adds, " Yet, if I may say so, I 
can never forgive Macaulay for his cruel and unaccountable injustice 
to Mrs. Thrale." 

41 .3. the Ephesian matron. She cared so much for her husband 
that she went into the vault to die with him, and there, in the midst of 
her violent grief, fell in love with a soldier who was guarding some 
dead bodies near by. For the story (told by a Latin writer, Petronius), 
see Jeremy Taylor's The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, Chapter V, 
section 8. — the two pictures. In Act III. 

42 2. Burke parted from him. After twenty-seven years of unin- 
terrupted friendship with Johnson, says Robina Napier. — Windham. 
The Right Hon. William Windham, a member of the Club, a friend of 
Malone, Burke, Fox, and Pitt; in 1794 Secretary at War (Pitt's minis- 
try), in 1806 War and Colonial Secretary (Lord Grenville's ministry); 
in the words of Macaulay, " the first gentleman of his age, the ingenious, 
the chivalrous, the high-souled Windham." Johnson wrote him appre- 
ciative letters in August and October, 1784. See Boswell. 

42 4. Frances Burney. In Macaulay's essay on Madame d'Arblay, 
he says : " Her appearance is an important epoch in our literary history. 
Evelina was the first tale written by a woman, and purporting to be a 
picture of life and manners, that lived or deserved to live." Read this 
account of the " timid and obscure girl " who suddenly " found herself 
on the highest pinnacle of fame," eulogized by such men as Burke, 
Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, and Sheridan. 



94 NOTES 

42 6. Langton. See page 30. 

42 JO-11. his temper. In connection with this closing sentence let 
us remember a paragraph from Boswell (1776) : 

" That he was occasionally remarkable for violence of temper may 
be granted : but let us ascertain the degree, and not let it be supposed 
that he was in a perpetual rage, and never without a club in his hand 
to knock down every one who approached him. On the contrary, the 
truth is, that ]:)y much the greatest part of his time he was civil, obli- 
ging, nay, polite in the true sense of the word ; so much so, that many 
gentlemen who were long acquainted with him never received, or even 
lieard a strong expression from him." 



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